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6hwo5f | Why is the domestication of dogs not considered the beginning of the agricultural revolution? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6hwo5f/why_is_the_domestication_of_dogs_not_considered/ | {
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"Hi, this question would be worth x-posting to our sister sub, r/AskAnthropology: while there are some specialists in pre-history here, there is a greater focus on early time periods over there."
]
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zs3z1 | What's the earliest evidence we have of jokes? What is the oldest one we know? were there jokes as we known them today back when Ancient civilizations stood? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zs3z1/whats_the_earliest_evidence_we_have_of_jokes_what/ | {
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"To paraphrase:\n\nA man walks over to a slave trader\n\"It's this slave you sold me yesterday. He's died\"\nthe slave trader says\n\"That's odd, he never did that when he was with me\"\n\nThis is an Ancient Greek joke found etched on a stone tablet. \n\n",
"Apparently a joke dating back to 1900 BCE was found in Sumeria: \"Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.\" This Egyptian joke dates back to 1600 BCE: \"How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish\" ([Reuters](_URL_0_))",
"I suggest you pick up a copy of the Táin Bó Cúailnge - early Irish literature. 1 century AD. It has some jokes/humour that should make you laugh."
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1zq3x2 | Civil War literature suggestions? | Looking for a overall history of the American Civil War. Any good books to recommend? SIAP | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zq3x2/civil_war_literature_suggestions/ | {
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"Depends on how committed you are, but Shelby Foote's *The Civil War: A Narrative* is pretty much the gold standard in Civil War history. It's a three volume work, very long and thorough. ",
"If you haven't already, you might consider watching Ken Burns' *Civil War* documentary series. It is available on Netflix, if that's an option for you."
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90667h | To what extent was local law allowed in the Roman Empire. | Specifically interested in whether the Romans ever allowed locals in the provinces to perform executions for violating their local laws. Did this evolve over time? But any information on punishments in general would be good to know. Thanks! | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/90667h/to_what_extent_was_local_law_allowed_in_the_roman/ | {
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"Local law was very much allowed in the Roman Empire, as a holdover from Republican days, whether the matter was civil or generally criminal. Governors of provinces generally allowed local courts to handle legal matters, only stepping in when cases were referred to them; at this point, generally the local law would apply to provincials, while Roman law declared by the urban praetor applied to Roman citizens living there (John Richardson's summary article on Roman law in the provinces from the *Cambridge Companion to Roman Law* is a relatively readable summary for an academic text). As Richardson states, local law was eroded as the Empire continued.\n\nHowever, the issue becomes thornier because you're specifically asking about criminal sentencing to death. This power - known as the *ius gladii* - was one reserved for the provincial governor (although this was not widespread in the first years of the Empire, instead remaining with the Emperor himself). However, this is not a totally clear-cut situation, as can be seen in a well known example - the sentencing of Jesus Christ.\n\nJohn 18 states that the Sanhedrin - the Jewish court - go to Pontius Pilate and tell him that they do not have the power to sentence him to death despite him breaking a law that demands it (Leviticus 24 states that blasphemy is a capital offence, punishable by stoning to death). So far, so consistent. However, Pilate tells them to \"take him (yourselves) and crucify him\" and the Jewish historian Josephus recounts other instances of the Sanhedrin issuing and carrying out death sentences at the time. Smallwood's *The Jews Under Roman Rule* hypothesises that an exemption may have been made allowing the Sanhedrin the power of execution in matters of religion, but offers no proof of this, only the examples given above."
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6ir7vp | why betting the same amount on two boxers to win will not always give a payout due to differing odds. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ir7vp/eli5_why_betting_the_same_amount_on_two_boxers_to/ | {
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"Any real-world bookie is going to adjust the odds and payouts so that they get a cut for themselves (the vig). They're not working for charity.",
"Like any gambling operation, the total of the payouts is always inferior to the total of the bets. That's the way the host makes their money. \n\nIn this case, the bookies would adjust the odds as they take bets in order to make sure that no matter the outcome they don't lose money.",
"Because the house sets the odds to try and get equal money to come in on both sides not so the winnings are equal on both sides",
"The casino needs their cut. It's easier to understand on a point spread bet where both sides are set to -110. If you bet 100 dollars on both, you are guaranteed to lose 9 dollars. The casino is taking the 100 dollars from your losing bet, pulling out 9 to pay themselves, and giving the remaining 91 to you to pay your winning bet. The same thing is happening on a moneyline bet, but it's less obvious with different odds at play. Also with the moneyline bet you aren't guaranteed to lose money if you bet an equal amount of money on both sides if the underdog wins.",
"Even if not using a bookie that takes a vig (cut of the money), you're still taking a risk. Let's say you bet $1 a piece on two boxers facing each other. One has 1:1 odds and the other has 4:5 odds. So you bet $2 on the fight. \n\nThere are two outcomes:\n\n* The 1:1 fighter wins and you make $2 from the fight. Well, since you sent $2 on both bets, you've broken even.\n* The 4:5 fighter wins and you make $1.80 from the fight. Again, you spent $2 on both bets, so you've lost $0.20.\n\nUnless the odds of one boxer winning are really huge, it isn't economically feasible to bet on both boxers and expect a guaranteed payout. Even if you do have 50:1 odds on a boxer, his opponent is going to have lower than 1:1 odds. If that boxer wins, you lose money by betting on both of them."
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tv8mr | I'm diabetic and I want to know about the industrially production of insulin | I heard something about using yeast, but I couldn't find a good explanation about it.
Thanks, reddit! | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/tv8mr/im_diabetic_and_i_want_to_know_about_the/ | {
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"[Wiki](_URL_0_) says this:\n\n > Recombinant human insulin. Thanks to study introduced by Ivan Garelli PhD, recombinant insulin has almost completely replaced insulin obtained from animal sources (e.g. pigs and cattle) for the treatment of insulin-dependent diabetes. A variety of different recombinant insulin preparations are in widespread use.[11] Recombinant insulin is synthesized by inserting the human insulin gene into E. coli, which then produces insulin for human use.\n\nIt also appears they've managed to create [plant produced insulin](_URL_1_) as well.\n\n[This](_URL_2_) article also talks about the yeast-derived insulin, as well as some history if you're interested.",
"It depends what kind of insulin you are talking about. There are a few different kinds. \n\nYou can usually look up how the insulin is made in the prescribing information (package insert) on the insulin bottle. For example if you look at the [lantus prescribing information](_URL_0_) in section 11 they describe exactly how the insulin is produced. In this case they use a strain of e.coli"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_insulin_production#Applications_of_recombinant_DNA_technology",
"http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_33/b4046083.htm",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_therapy#Principles"
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"http://products.sanofi.us/lantus/lantus.html#section-11"
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nel3i | Is their a theoretical limit to how much a pound of muscle can do? Is it possible to calculate, knowing a single persons muscle mass, how much they would be able to lift? (this is factoring in a healthy person, with full tanks of energy and no injuries.) | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/nel3i/is_their_a_theoretical_limit_to_how_much_a_pound/ | {
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"This is pretty hackneyed, but I'll post it anyway:\nkonstantin konstantinovs is a super strong Latvian powerlifter. He weights around 268lbs and has maxed out his deadlift at 938lbs. He's pretty lean for a powerlifter, so I'll guess that he's around 10% (26lbs) body fat and take that off his total weight, this leaves 242lbs. Next I'll guess that his bones and organs weigh around 80lbs, so I'll subtract that from his total weight as well, leaving 162lbs of pure muscle. Divide that by his max deadlift and I we can estimate that 1lb of Konstantin's muscle has the ability to lift 5.7lbs.",
"A theoretical limit for a human isn't going to be possible-- how do you define human-- every day we come outwith new models that have never-before-seen genetics and environment. \n\nYou could get something like \"the maximum any animal muscle fiber could ever produce\"-- but then how do you define animal muscle fiber? \n\nThis is a job for measurement, not theory. ",
"This is pretty hackneyed, but I'll post it anyway:\nkonstantin konstantinovs is a super strong Latvian powerlifter. He weights around 268lbs and has maxed out his deadlift at 938lbs. He's pretty lean for a powerlifter, so I'll guess that he's around 10% (26lbs) body fat and take that off his total weight, this leaves 242lbs. Next I'll guess that his bones and organs weigh around 80lbs, so I'll subtract that from his total weight as well, leaving 162lbs of pure muscle. Divide that by his max deadlift and I we can estimate that 1lb of Konstantin's muscle has the ability to lift 5.7lbs.",
"A theoretical limit for a human isn't going to be possible-- how do you define human-- every day we come outwith new models that have never-before-seen genetics and environment. \n\nYou could get something like \"the maximum any animal muscle fiber could ever produce\"-- but then how do you define animal muscle fiber? \n\nThis is a job for measurement, not theory. "
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2rs54w | how the fuck is spreading jelly (i.e.vapo rub) on my chest supposed to help congestion? | I mean really | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rs54w/eli5how_the_fuck_is_spreading_jelly_ievapo_rub_on/ | {
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"You put it on your chest because you're going to be drawing air in to your lungs from that area. The vapors from the jelly mix with the air you breathe.",
"The biggest cause of congestion is inflamed tubes.\n\nThe goop is full of menthol, which evaporates very readily. As it evaporates (the \"vapo\" in vapo rub), you breath it in. \n\nOne of the reasons that menthol evaporates so readily is because it absorbs heat very well. When the menthol comes into contact with your inner tubes, the cooling helps reduce inflammation. This relieves the congestion."
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1nuyi8 | Would World War I be classified as a "World War" if the US never got involved? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nuyi8/would_world_war_i_be_classified_as_a_world_war_if/ | {
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"The first known use of the proper name \"World War\" (as opposed to \"Great War\" or \"European War\") was in 1919, if the *OED* is to be believed. It was used as a general descriptor (\"a world-war\" or the German *Weltkrieg*) for the conflict as early as 1914 so the idea existed well before US entry. So it might--it involved Canada and Japan at the outset, after all--but as with all counterfactuals, we can't say with certainty. The other choice, the Great War, persisted for a longer time especially in Europe, so the US may have been a crucial driver for its general adoption. But usage varied and turned heavily on political perceptions and motivations, so just as we can't say what a Second World War would have looked like without US involvement in 1917-1918, we also can't say what the contours of its naming would have been. But it was *possible*.\n\nFor a discussion of the naming issue in historical context, see David Reynolds, [\"The Origins of the Two 'World Wars': Historical Discourse and International Politics,\" *Journal of Contemporary History* 38, no. 1 (2003): 29-44.](_URL_0_) ",
"The classification 'World War' is a technical term that doesn't precisely have an answer. It's simplest, and most commonly accepted definition is a 'War spanning multiple countries and continents, and multiple theatres of war'. \n\nWorld War I featured -\n\n| Allies | Central Powers | Others |\n|:------------------:|:-----------------------------------------:|:------------:|\n| British Empire |Austro-Hungarian Empire (Austria, Hungary, Few Balkan states, Bosnia, Hertzegovnia, Serbia, Part of Montenegro, others) | Albania\n| Belgium (Including Colonial forces) |Bulgaria | Andorra\n|Australia |German Empire| Armenia (1918)\n|BE's Colonies| Ottoman Empire |Bolivia (1917 onwards)\n|Canada||Brazil (1917 Onwards)\n|India||China (1917 Onwards)\n|New Zealand||Costa Rica (1918)\n|Newfoundland||Cuba (1917 Onwards)\n|South Africa|| Czechoslovakia\n|France|| Ecuador (1917 Onwards)\n|Kingdom of Greece (May 1917 onwards)||Guatemala (1918)\n|Kingdom of Italy (1915 onwards)|| Liberia (1917 Onwards)\n|Empire of Japan|| Haiti (1918)\n|Kingdom of Montenegro||Honduras (1918)\n|Portugal (1916 Onwards)||Nicaguara (1918)\n|Kingdom of Romania (1916-1918)||Panama (1917 Onwards)\n|Russian Empire (1914-1917)||Peru (1917 Onwards)\n|Kingdom of Serbia|| San Marino (1915 Onwards)\n|United States of America (1917 Onwards)||Siam (1917 Onwards)\n|||Uruguay (1917 Onwards)\n\n\n-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nI suppose with WW1 you can split it into 4 key theatres.\n\n**Western Front**\n\n| Entente | Central Powers |\n|:----------:|:----------:|\n|UKE + Colonies | German Empire|\n|France + Colonies | Austria-Hungary|\n|Italy\n|Belgium\n|USA\n|Portugal\n|Russia\n\n**Eastern Front**\n\n| Entente | Central Powers |\n|:----------:|:----------:|\n|Russian Empire (1914-1917) | German Empire\n|Russian Provisional Government (1917) | Austria-Hungary\n|Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1918) | Bulgaria (1916-1917)\n|Romania (1916-1917) | Ottoman Empire (1916-1917)\n\n**Itallian Front**\n\n| Entente | Central Powers |\n|:----------:|:----------:|\n|Italy|Austria-Hungary\n|British Empire|German Empire\n|France\n|Czechoslovak Legions\n|USA\n\n**Galipolli (Not entirely sure if this is a 'front' or a 'Campaign', but it's worth a mention)**\n\n| Entente | Central Powers |\n|:----------:|:----------:|\n|British Empire|Ottoman Empire (With help, GE & AH)\n|France|\n\n\nBasically, Yeah. It was one HELL of a global conflict across Europe and Asia, regardless of US intervention it's a gigantic scale.",
"Yes.\n\nMen from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and even French African territories fought. I think there were also those from South Africa for the Crown, too.\nThere was also fighting in Turkey and if you've seen *Lawrence of Arabia* you'd know all about the Arabia at the time."
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32pgkz | why do people look slimmer in certain colors? | I read an article awhile back about a woman who took a progress picture and it appeared as if she lost a lot of weight, but she revealed that all she had done was stand up straighter, fix her hair, and **wear a different color**. I was wondering how wearing a different color could change someone's bodily appearance. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32pgkz/eli5_why_do_people_look_slimmer_in_certain_colors/ | {
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"[Here's](_URL_0_) an article about how wearing black (or other dark colors) can make you look slimmer: \n\n > If you have a very light T-shirt on, your shape will be noticeable within the fabric. Any curves, bulges, or flat areas will be noticeable beneath the white fabric. If the T-shirt is black however, that will not be the case. All that will be easily noticeable is that there is a field of black. This field will not have bulges or areas that look large unless the T-shirt is very tight. That creates a field that is slimmer and smaller looking than it would be otherwise."
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atsgk4 | why does hand sanitizer feel so cold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atsgk4/eli5_why_does_hand_sanitizer_feel_so_cold/ | {
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"Hand sanitizers are made to be spread over the hands and then dry quickly. Usually this is done by dissolving the sanitizing agent in a highly volatile (means evaporates or vaporizes quickly) liquid, usually alchohol.\n\nSo it acts like sweat on steroids, it evaporates so fast, and so much at one time that it basically pulls all the heat from the surface of your hands.",
"The alcohol quickly evaporates from your skin. Faster than water would. As it does, it grabs a bit of heat from your hand. It’s the same as why water evaporating from your skin cools it off including sweat. Alcohol does it faster so it cools your skin quicker. ",
"Heat is atoms bouncing around like pool balls. Higher temperatures are faster balls. Sometimes 2 balls hit 1 ball and kick 2x the amount of energy into the single ball. That ball goes so fast it flies of the table... It evaporates into the air. Since that ball had lots of energy, and it took it with it when it flies away, the pool table with all the balls bouncing around now has less energy overall and gets cooler.",
"Evaporation is an endothermic reaction, and it evaporates so quickly that you easily notice it."
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2c449l | Does lightening ever travel up, above the clouds to interact with planes etc.? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2c449l/does_lightening_ever_travel_up_above_the_clouds/ | {
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"Well, lightning doesn't care about direction, only about the electric potential. There are plenty of strikes [between or inside clouds](_URL_1_).\n\n[Planes also get struck by lightning all the time](_URL_0_), which is generally harmless since they act as Faraday cages.\n\nThe specific thing you seem to be asking about is whether planes can also get struck by lightning when they're much higher than the clouds. [This seems to say the answer is no](_URL_2_), because the plane isn't an effective ground by itself, and has to be between, inside or below clouds to get hit.",
"Yes, lightning does travel up. The lightning you may typically think of is really affected by electric potential. Arancaytar explains this and the effects. However, there are more interesting types of lightning. These include Elves, Spirits, and Blue Jets. Most of these occur in the upper atmosphere, however these can be explained by this [Wikipedia Article](_URL_0_). I also recommend watching '[The Universe](_URL_1_)' that explains these. Sorry that it's split in 5 parts, however the show is phenomenal so I recommend watching it all anyways."
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"http://petergreenberg.com/2014/04/07/what-happens-lightning-strikes-an-airplane/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Cloud_to_cloud_.28CC.29_and_Intra-Cloud_.28IC.29",
"http://www.lufthansa-technik.com/lightning-strikes"
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2fleis | the meaning/significance of all the nazi stuff in pink floyd's the wall. | Ok Roger Waters and crew: I'm on board for the whole "only child, absent father, oppressive mother, stifling English education, growing up to be a drug addled, slightly crazed (maybe suicidal) rock star" thing. But the "double-hammer/fire up the ovens" bits, etc.? Huh?? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fleis/eli5_the_meaningsignificance_of_all_the_nazi/ | {
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"It's about shutting out things that are not like ourselves and withdrawing by being unpleasant to people around us. Pink has been so hurt by all of the things that have happened in his life that he is pushing people away so that they won't hurt him any more.\n\n_URL_0_",
"His father was killed at Anzio in WW2, so I'm sure that has a little bit to do with the Nazi imagery. ",
"Waters was born in 1943 in the UK devastated by the war that killed his father. The rebuilding would have lasted most of his childhood, and he would have been too young to remember or understand what the Nazi's did, just that they were the reason he didn't have a father and the country was falling apart.\n\nSounds like the perfect boogeyman to build nightmares around."
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2j7m9e | [Medicine] Do flu shots really contain only one strain of influenza? If so, how is that one particular strain chosen every year? What are the reasons we cannot inoculate with multiple strains? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2j7m9e/medicine_do_flu_shots_really_contain_only_one/ | {
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"Most flu vaccines protect against 3 viruses (two influenza A viruses (an H1N1 and an H3N2) and an influenza B virus) with some providing protection against 4 viruses.\n\nThe makeup of each vaccine that will be licensed for use is ultimately up to individual countries but they are strongly influenced by a World Health Organisation panel that is convened twice a year to assess the research and predict what the most common strains will be in the upcoming flu seasons. \n\nYou can read much more about the process [here](_URL_0_).",
"I did my grad work in one of the labs that develops the annual flu vaccine, and my thesis was on improving viral yield. \n\nIt contains three strains, two of Influenza A, and one of B. Every year in the North Hemisphere spring, the strains that are circulating elsewhere in the world are studied, and the committee chooses the three that are predicted to be most dangerous when the winter flu season comes around next. Samples of these strains are grown in pure culture and sent to labs for development.\n\nThe flu vaccine is grown by inoculating embryonated chicken eggs with the virus, and then harvesting the allantoic fluid several days later, and purifying the amplified virus from that, killing it with formalin, and formulating the vaccine.\nThe difficulty lies in that the strain needed for the vaccine might not grow well in eggs, or might kill the embryo quickly. Therefore, the strain containing the surface antigens (hemagglutinin and neuraminidase) are crossed with strains maintained in eggs for decades, and well adapted to high yield in eggs. This is possible because influenza has an 8-segmented genome, and two strains can infect the same cell simultaneously. What we did was inject both strains (vaccine and lab) into the egg, and harvest the progeny. These will contain a mixture of every combination of the genomes from both strains. These are diluted out a great deal, to the point where we are trying to inject < 1 virus per egg, on average, to get pure cultures of the progeny we want. The goal would be to inject ten eggs with the same dilution, and get one with virus in it. This is repeated several times and the progeny are tested to find the ones with the same H and N surface antigens of the wild-type vaccine strain, and the internal genes (Matrix, Nuclear protein, etc..) of the lab strain. These will grow with high yield in eggs, allowing for a faster and more cost effective vaccine production run, and be indistinguishable from the wild-type strain to the immune system. \n\nEdit, Stupid typos from multitasking"
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2f65ot | when a stock market crashes and everyone is desperately 'selling', who is actually willing to 'buy'? | Wolf of Wall Street got me thinking about this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f65ot/eli5_when_a_stock_market_crashes_and_everyone_is/ | {
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"Smart people with cash. Buying when the market crashes is a great investment, **IF** you can afford to wait until the market recovers to realize your gains.",
"The fact that not many people are willing to buy is what *causes* the crash. If as many people were buying as selling, the price would stay about the same. The fact people are desperate to sell means there are more sellers than buyers, so the price drops.\n\nThe few people who are buying are either ignorant of the crisis, or buying speculatively thinking that he stocks will rebound at a later date. Shares that crash to near zero will either rebound, or become completely worthless if the company involved goes bankrupt and has no positive assets.",
"Many investors have a point at which they think it's always a good time to purchase a stock if it is at or below a certain point. So, yes, even when people are selling, there are going to be people buying.\n\nThe reason is that often, mass selloffs are part of a panic, which is more of an emotional reaction than a financial one. Emotions wear off, but the actual value of the company is not as affected as much.",
"There is a lot of profit to be had during crises. When industry-wide or even market-wide crashes occur, no company's stock or asset goes untouched. Perfectly healthy company stocks and assets will see their values tumble.\n\nRecessions are the perfect time to purchase assets if you have the liquidity. Emotional sentiment, and sometimes financial necessity, urges people to save money during recessions, but your money is most liquid during recessions. If you properly diversify, you're far more likely to make an immense profit than investing in a rising market.",
"Brokers and investment institutions are the buyers during a large sell-off.\n\nThe brokers on the floor of the market are responsible for lining up buyers and sellers and arranging a price for shares to change hands (the ask and offer prices). The number of shares sold by private investors seldom equals the number of shares other private investors wish to purchase and the broker on the floor is how this difference is resolved.\n\nThe broker will buy shares from sellers and keep them in a cache until a buyer wishes to purchase the shares (this is why brokers are backed by large investment banks). This can be quite profitable because it's quite risky for the broker. Large investment banks pay for the right to have traders/brokers on the floor and in exchange for that they can make money off the difference between the ask and the offer prices.\n\nPart of the terms of having access to the trading floor is a requirement that the broker must purchase shares that people wish to sell. When a sell off occurs this can be really bad for the broker, or as other people have pointed out, it can be quite good if they expect the stock to rebound from the drop in share price.\n\nTL;DR: Traders on the floor, backed by large investment banks, are required to fulfill market orders even in times of a sell-off.",
"A lot of purchases on Wall Street are made with *leverage*. You essentially borrow money from the brokerage to buy stocks, they go up, you sell them, pay back the loan, and keep the difference. There are a lot of different kinds of leverage, but they all about to risking more to make more.\n\nThis is great when stocks go up, you can make a lot more money that way. But when they go down, even for a short time, you can be in big trouble...the broker can call back the loan, and liquidate your assets to pay it back. You can wind up broke and still owing a ton of money.\n\nSo those are the guys who are frantically selling. The buyers are saying, I can get these stocks at a huge discount, weather the crash, and make a big long term profit.\n\n",
"There is a good amount of \"short\" selling & covering that goes on during a stock crash. Basically during a short sale you sell securities that you do not own, with the promise that you'll buy them back later to \"cover\" the position. With a short play, you are essentially betting that the stock will go down in value, & profiting on the difference between the sale price & the price you buy it back at.\n\nFor example, lets say after research I believe Lehman Brothers stock will be going down in price in the near future. Right now the stock is at $10.00. I can Short Sell 100 shares of it, which means I will be given $1000 ($10/share x 100 shares). Well, since I sold shares I don't actually own, I have to buy back the same number of shares to cover the position. So, I wait for a while, and as suspected, the Lehman Brothers stock drops to $5/share, so I decide to cover , and buy back the 100 shares I owe. Only, i now can buy them at the lower price of $500, so I just made $500 profit. \n\nDuring a sell-off, people who held short positions on the stock will be buying them back since they're profiting on ability to buy stock at the discounted price. The practice of short selling was actually banned on many financial assets following the crash. \n\nThe practice of \"Naked Shorting\" is thought to have contributed to the instability of the 2008 market crash. This is where you sell securities that were never actually owned or borrowed in the first place. \n\nBesides that, there are large financial institutions known as \"Market Makers\" who always provide liquidity on a stock, and buy/sell even during crashes. They are typically making money through complex trading algorithms regardless of the price of the actual asset."
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2n0o0k | Is it possible for things we consider to be waves to exhibit particle like behaviours at a quantum level? | If at a quantum level things we consider to be particles are able to exhibit wave like behaviours, is it possible for waves of light to behave in particle like ways? Why or why not? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2n0o0k/is_it_possible_for_things_we_consider_to_be_waves/ | {
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"It works both ways: Quantum objects exhibit the characteristics of both particles and of waves, but are they themselves neither.",
" > If at a quantum level things we consider to be particles are able to exhibit wave like behaviours, is it possible for waves of light to behave in particle like ways? Why or why not?\n\nYes, as /u/AsAChemicalEngineer says, it works both ways. The particle description of light waves is in terms of fundamental particles called photons. You can also describe waves in a material in a particle description as collective excitations that have particle-like behavior, called [phonons](_URL_0_). See [this](_URL_1_) for more examples."
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ein8rj | why is it that lobsters have the possibility to be born with so many rare colorations? | I’ve seen blue lobsters, cotton candy lobsters, and yellow lobsters. If they all had equal chances of existing, I’d understand, but any coloration besides red seems to be one in a million. Why is this possible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ein8rj/eli5_why_is_it_that_lobsters_have_the_possibility/ | {
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"Short answer:\nEach lobster has color pigments (red, blue, yellow), that determine the color of the shell. \n\nSpecific mutations change the amount of pigment and thus the color.\n\nSome mutations that influence (for example) blue pigment naturally appear more often than others, that is why blue lobsters appear more often than yellow ones.\n\n\nSource & cool additional info and more accurate than my short description is here:\n_URL_0_"
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1tt92d | why doesn't water help with dry skin? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tt92d/eli5_why_doesnt_water_help_with_dry_skin/ | {
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"You would think that putting water on the skin would moisturize it more, but the opposite is true. Plain water that comes in contact with skin evaporates and takes with it many of the skin's natural oils called natural moisturizing factor (NMF). The more frequently that skin comes into contact with water, the drier it gets -- unless those natural oils are replaced\n\n_URL_0_",
"its not water that makes skin stay moist - its oils in the skin. ^edit to be completely clear, the water is still important - the oil just acts to prevent that water from evaporating. \n\nIf you have dry skin, its because your skin's natural oil production is for whatever reason lower than it should be.\n\n\n\nEdit: I'm not a dermatologist, just a lumpy potato that resembles a [scrotum](_URL_4_), so any questions are going to get some less-than-stellar answers. try /r/Dermatology or /r/AskADoctor \n\nDouble edit: Dermatologists/Doctors are there for a reason, if you have a serious skin condition or are worried about your skin, talk to them and see what your options are.\n\nTriple edit: There's got to be a few dermatologists out there somewhere who can help verify answers or answer questions throughout this thread! If anyone viewing knows someone, see if you can ask them and see whats up.\n\nFinal edit; Figures one of my most well-voted comments on ELI5 involves a scrotum joke. Cheers all!\n\n---------------\nUseful Links:\n\n/u/ieatbugs posted [here](_URL_1_) a link to /r/SkincareAddiction on the types off Moisturizers out there that might be of some use to people\n\n/u/steve-s posted [here](_URL_3_) a link to an _URL_2_ article that has some information on natural skin oils\n\nBy request from /u/LgNBullseye , a [selfie](_URL_0_). That is really a potato, I promise :p",
"Chemical engineer here. Water is a mild solvent, in fact it is frequently called a 'universal' solvent and that is why water doesn't help with dry skin.",
"Water does help with dry skin, but you have to drink it first.",
"The water evaporates quickly without oils to retain it. However, if you are going to apply lotion, hydrate your skin with water first to retain the moisture.",
"Yeah, the water ends up absorbing moisture rather that moisturizing your skin.\n\nAlso, repeated water exposure can quickly dry out and chafe skin. It's why it's better to not lick your lips when they're chapped.\n\nI learned the hard way when I suffered from a case of REALLY bad chapped lips that the only way to get rid of it was to stop licking my lips. The half a gallon of lip balm and Vaseline helped too.",
"Drinking water does help, Hydration internally makes you beautiful externally.\n",
"Skin is usually dry due to impaired barrier function, meaning water can be easily evaporated into the atmosphere. It's not dry from lack of a water source. Come to /r/skincareaddiction for scientific and evidence based reasoning on skincare! Here's an explanation of how moisturizers work: _URL_0_",
"The reason water doesn't help is because of a protein called Keratin. It's on the top layer of the skin and is also what makes up a fingernail. This protein is tough and also Waterproof. That's why you don't just soak up water immediately. Since water molecules are so small they are able to slip through our skin membranes and eventually you absorb it. But just adding water to dry skin doesn't make it moist. ",
"Water is a polar solvent. It's just going to wash oils away.",
"why is my face greasy, yet dry and flaky? ",
"If you drink the water and stay hydrated, it kinda does. Water that you drink circulates throughout your body including in your largest organ (your skin).\n\nBut if you just put water on your skin it doesn't really absorb, it just rinses off the natural oils that your skin secretes to keep itself from drying out. \n",
"This epidermis (the outermost layer of skin) is composed of dead skin cells. As we go about our day, millions of these cells flake off and are replaced by new ones, which are constantly being produced from the living layers in the stratum basale (the deepest layer of the skin). The skin also has oil glands and hair follicles spread throughout it. It is the oil that keeps skin \"moist,\" and not water. If water is placed on the skin, it can be absorbed by the dead skin cell layer, but this will only cause them to loosen, stick together and then flake off more easily. You can test this by soaking in a bath for a while, and then scraping your fingernails across the back of your neck. Often times, you will gather a film under your nails comprised almost entirely of dead skin cells. ",
"The natural oils on the surface of your skin repel water. In fact, too much water can wash away these oils, which, in turn, allows the moisture in your skin to escape, causing even drier skin.\n\nFun theory: Your hands and feet wrinkle in the water to provide extra grip. Some scientists believe this is an involuntary reaction by your nervous system. ",
"Simple response.\n\nWashing your hands/having your hands exposed to water a lot will strip the oils off your skin, exposing it to the dry air (particularly in winter, which is why I believe you're asking) and causing it to try out and occasionally crack.\n\nAs someone with perennial issues with dry hands in winter, if you wash you hands, follow up with some lotion to protect your hands afterward.",
"Water has a tendency to evaporate quickly because of heat. So, when you put water on your dry skin it quickly goes away. Oil, such as Vaseline, or that which your body produces, traps the moisture.",
"I asked why people pop pimples in ELI5, and it gets deleted because you can't ask medical advice, yet this makes it to the front page. Well played.",
"Moisturisation of your skin is all about trapping the water in there. \n\nYou can add as much water as you like either by pouring it onto your skin or by drinking it. If it is not trapped in some way then it is lost (through a process called transepidermal water loss). \n\nThe way that skin naturally traps the water in the skin is by the natural loss of skin cells called keratinocytes. The keratinocytes are produced in the basal layer of the epidermis and move up through their ~28 day life cycle but as they move up through the epidermal layers they flatten out, eventually squeezing their contents out, which is essentially skin oils. This oil layer stops water from your body escaping but also from unwanted things from entering the body.\n\nWhen these oils are lost water can escape and your skin becomes dry so you moisturise. Moisturisers work in two ways. The crude way is to create a greasy layer which prevents water escaping. The clever way is that they contain a chemical which attracts water to the epidermis (both can be executed at the same time).\n\nSource: Was a Senior Scientist in charge of producing and testing on a living skin equivalent at a skin research company and now a research technician in the skin centre of a University.",
"Not a dermatologist, but I have studied structures of the hair and skin in beauty school. \nThe pH of our skin is between 4.5 and 5.5. Our skin is slightly acidic. Water is usually around pH 7, meaning in comparison to our skin, it is alkaline. Because of its alkalinity, water strips away oils on the surface of the skin . \n",
"It does help, if you drink it. ",
"Everyone here seems to be talking about why oil hydrates the skin and ignoring the question about why water doesn't. Here it is:\n\n**Your skin is supposed to be a two-way barrier to most substances. The outermost layer, the epidermis, is a bunch of tightly packed dead skin cells that are supposed to keep bad things out and good things in. Out of necessity, your skin is not very permeable to water and as such does not absorb it readily. Molecular explanation at the end for those interested.**\n\nMost biological processes are extremely dependent on and sensitive to concentration changes. If water easily absorbed into the epidermis, you would lose a ridiculous amount of water throughout the day as it diffused through your skin and evaporated at the surface. You would lose another important thing this way: nutrients. As the water diffuses through the epidermis, the important vitamins, minerals, proteins, etc. that are all dissolved in it get carried through the tissue as well. Since both water and all the nutrients dissolved in it are essential to life, if your epidermis were highly permeable to these, your body would out of necessity need to expend an incredible amount of energy to actively pump these things back into your body, against their natural flow. Your body already spends LOTS of energy doing this, without constantly leaking water through your skin all day. Your kidneys' primary purpose is to retain water while eliminating waste. While they make up roughly 0.5% of your body's mass, they use about 10% of the oxygen you take in every day in aerobic cellular respiration. In lay terms, that means they use about 20 times as much energy than the average cell in your body JUST to keep water in as they let waste pass through.\n\nAnother consideration in the case of \"what if your skin was permeable to water\" is that your skin protects you from lots and lots of infectious pathogens every day. This is why severe burn victims are placed in isolation in the hospital, in sterile rooms, because they are incredibly susceptible to deadly infections from germs that wouldn't even faze a normal, healthy individual.\n\nThese kinds of things are why dead skin cells consist of alpha keratin. It's a structural protein that is essentially insoluble in water and forms that oh-so-crucial barrier between our insides and our outsides.\n\nIf you want the molecular view from a biochemist, well here it is: the primary structural protein of skin is alpha keratin. This protein consists of several layers of structure, starting with an alpha-helix. Two alpha helices coil around each other to form a coiled coil, two coiled coils twist around each other to form a protofilament, two of these twist to form a protofibril, and four protofibrils twist to make a filament. Think of it as twisting a couple pieces of floss together to make a heavier thread, then twisting a few pieces of this heavier thread to make a light rope, then continuing until you get a really thick piece that is made of lots of these smaller ropes. Even though many of the amino residue R-groups that face the solvent are polar, the elongated structure means that it is, thermodynamically, very costly for water to solvate these. This is due to the increased ordering of the water molecules near the surface of the filament (a decrease in entropy). There are two reasons the filaments do not ball up like globular proteins do (which would make them much more soluble): the noncovalent interactions at the various levels of structure reinforce the filaments and make them resistant to curling (think how easy it is to bend a thin stranded wire but how much harder it gets when the wire is thicker), and lots of filaments near each other easily form tangled messes of protein, where there simply isn't room to curl.",
"Phone save ignore",
"I actually figured this out the other night while tripping... basically I realized how after a shower I was dried out because I scrubbed the oils that keep me moist out. Then I realized the reason the elbows and feet are prone to being dry is because they come in contact with other surfaces the most. Removing essential oils for hydration. Think of a new old wooden railing that's supper smooth and slick from years of people's hands rubbing them.\n\n"
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10tzg2 | what a "trust fund baby" is and exactly how a "trust fund" works. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10tzg2/eli5_what_a_trust_fund_baby_is_and_exactly_how_a/ | {
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"Trust funds are basically special savings accounts that pay you an allowance. A young person with an inherited trust fund is called a trust fund baby.",
"A trust is a specific legal entity that allows someone to separate themselves from an amount of their money. Money placed in the trust is \"safe\" and can not usually be touched except for the express purposes that are outlined in the formation of the trust. A trust fund baby most likely has a trust set up for them that is for the express purpose of funding their well-being, i.e. the baby is the trust's beneficiary. \n\nTrusts typically have executives that are in charge of ensuring that funds taken out of the trust are in accordance with the trust's objective or stated purpose. For example if I made a trust for my son and decided I wanted to take out a few hundred grand to get myself a car, the executor would tell me to buzz off since that is completely unrelated to the purpose of the trust.\n\nA trust can be ordered liquidated by the court in the event that it appears to be illusory, e.g. I make a trust, make myself the executive as well the beneficiary, in that case I am simply trying to hide funds. I would imagine that unless there is abuse of the funds by the parents or executive a trust fund established for a child would be very hard to prove as illusory, I was just including this for completeness.\n\nThat's my understanding of trusts but a lawyer would be able to explain it more thoroughly. In a nutshell, think of it as a special savings account with special protections that can only be used for very specific purposes.\n\nSource: My father is an attorney and has given me a high level summary on how these work in layman's terms. I am not an actual lawyer so I may have some of the minutia wrong, I am pretty confident in the high level functionality though.",
"From a [past post](_URL_0_) included in [\"The Five-Year-Old's Guide to the Galaxy\"](_URL_1_)\n\n > \"It's a essentially a bank account with a babysitter.\n\n > Pretend we have three friends: Al, Bob, and Charlie.\n\n > * Al is rich and his parents give him lots of money.\n > * Bob is poor and his parents can't afford to give him any money.\n > * Charlie is trustworthy; everyone knows Charlie would never steal a dime from his friends.\n\n > Al, being a VERY nice guy, decides he wants to help Bob out. So he decides that he's going to take $50 he's saved up and give it to Bob. However he's worried about Bob. Bob has never had money before and if he gives him the $50 all at once, then Bob might blow it on stuff like candy and soda within a week, when what Bob really needs is lunch money for the rest of the school year. Al is also a little lazy. He doesn't want to bother slowly handing the money out himself, so he decides to give the money to Charlie to dole it out for him.\n\n > This relationship is called a TRUST because Al TRUSTS Charlie to do what has been asked of him and not steal the money. The money is called a TRUST FUND, because it's the whole point of the TRUST. So now everyone benefits: Al gets to be a good Samaritan without all the hard work, Bob gets money as he needs it, and even Charlie benefits because he'll loan the money he hasn't given out yet to other kids and they'll pay him back with interest, which he'll get to keep for himself!\"\n"
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4vgset | it is said that children are (almost) immune to motion sickness up to the age of 2. why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vgset/eli5_it_is_said_that_children_are_almost_immune/ | {
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"The main reason for motion sickness is our body has trouble reconciling the visual cues for no movement with the physical sensation of movement. The difference causes our bod to freak out, and we throw up to expel whatever apparent poison we've consumed.\n\nChildren don't have the history to realize there is a discrepancy yet.",
"Toddlers have emerging balance sense. Watch them walk, and you'll see that they don't seem sensitive to the fact that they are about to tip over. That balance sense is what's upset by external accelerations to cause motion sickness.",
"Coming not from a biological standpoiny but rather a virtual reality developer's standpoint motion sickness is caused by our perceived movement being different than our actual physical (or expected) movement, so therefor if a child doesn't have those physical expectations of what movement should look/feel like there is no opposing stimuli to make them think anything is different. ",
"Huh. My parents told me that I always got horrible motion sickness in the car when I was a baby. Is this supposed to be true of all babies, or just most?"
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6007xy | court mandated community service is like forced labour? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6007xy/eli5_court_mandated_community_service_is_like/ | {
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"Court mandated community service is offered to people who commit a small crime, such as stealing a chocolate bar. The judge or justice of peace may give you an option to show that you are not a bad person by doing something such as community service or even writing an apology letter to the person you had wronged. This is called a diversion. Failure to complete your diversion means you end up in jail for the stated amount of time for the crime, which you would have faced had you not taken a diversion, but it can be worse jail time because you made a promise to do community service yet failed to complete it.",
"Yes, it is. Punishments by courts almost always involve someone doing something they'd rather not do.\n\nIf you think the community service is bad, prison is worse.",
"No one is \"forcing\" the work. Court mandated community service is considered a far less severe punishment than the alternative fines or jail time. Most people gladly take picking up garbage or volunteering at a church over paying large sums of money."
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6i531w | if the reason most mammals have testicles outside their bodies, what about sea-mammals (seals, whales etc)? how do they get around the issue of high body temperature affecting sperm? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6i531w/eli5_if_the_reason_most_mammals_have_testicles/ | {
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"Sea mammals keep their testicles in internal pouches surrounded by thick tendon-like tissues that keep the temperature lower than the surrounding muscles."
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1r7jb6 | why are musicians/composers like mozart regarded so highly? if something almost just like it came along now, would it be regarded as highly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r7jb6/eli5_why_are_musicianscomposers_like_mozart/ | {
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"W.A. Mozart is considered by most musicians to be one of the most influential composers for a variety of reasons:\n\n(WALL OF TEXT WARNING, I'm on mobile, sorry)\n\n-Prolific composer: He composed over 600 works throughout his lifetime, for a large variety of mediums (symphony, string quartets, trips, duos, woodwind ensembles, solo instruments, etc...). Many of those works are considered pillars of the repertoire.\n\n-Stylistic innovation: During Mozart's early life, the \"stile galant\" was the dominant compositional language. This style was characterized by its overly simple harmonic and rhythmic structures, as well as its apparent superficiality. Composers of galant style were primarily concerned with doing away with the intellectual complexity of the Baroque period (most notably J.S. Bach). Mozart gradually did away with this style, incorporating Baroque style complexity into his compositions while maintaining utmost clarity and expressiveness. He also incorporated the \"sturm und drang\" style (storm and stress) later in life, paving the way, along with Haydn, for the Romantic period, and composers like Ludwig van Beethoven and the such.\n\nA quote by pianist Charles Rosen puts it real nicely:\n\n \"It is only through recognizing the violence and sensuality at the center of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterization of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous.\"\n\nTL;DR: Mozart changed the musical landscape by bringing back true depth of emotion in music, writing a ton of music, and being a role model for just about all composers after him. And he had the hots for his cousin. And he liked poop and fart jokes. Go figure."
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fa5sfy | why can some women be in labor for more than a day and some give birth in less than an hour? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fa5sfy/eli5_why_can_some_women_be_in_labor_for_more_than/ | {
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"score": [
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"text": [
"That’s just the way it goes. There will always be a range of time periods. Some babies, especially the second and third births, are more ready and able to make their escape."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
5kq0ko | how do colony based insects, such as ants, decide who to make the queen (or king) and how does that one get so much bigger/different in appearance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kq0ko/eli5_how_do_colony_based_insects_such_as_ants/ | {
"a_id": [
"dbppngs"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"The queen ant mates with a male and his sperm is used by her to produce eggs. The fertilized eggs develop into females and the unfertilized eggs develop into males(haplo-diploid sex determination). The workers feed the larvae and on the basis of each ones diet they develop either into workers or queens. The queens then leave the colony to find males and to start new colonies."
]
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| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
fvyxti | how is it that some drugs are metabolised through the kidneys and others through the liver? | I always hear this but don’t understand how this can work? Why aren’t all drugs metabolised through the kidney or vice versa? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fvyxti/eli5_how_is_it_that_some_drugs_are_metabolised/ | {
"a_id": [
"fml9ihh",
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"text": [
"Metabolism of drugs means that a certain chemical in the body, typically an enzyme, does something to the drug. Obviously, those enzymes can't operate anywhere else than where they are; certain enzymes are present in the liver, while others are present in the kidneys. That determines where a drug will be metabolized.",
"Great question! \n\nDifferent drugs display a variety of metabolic pathways. Some are metabolized by the liver, while others are metabolized in the bloodstream or other tissues. Others are never metabolized at all. The **main factors that determine how a drug is metabolized (and eliminated from the body) are (1) the intrinsic chemical properties of the drug, (2) which enzymes the drug interacts with, and (3) where the drug actually goes**.\n\nWith respect to chemical properties: in broad terms, a drug that is too large, too negatively charged, or too fat-soluble (that is, hydrophobic or with a greater affinity for fatty or nonpolar substances) is difficult for the kidneys to get rid of in the urine. This is because the drug molecule cannot be filtered by the kidney (usually because it's too big or repelled electrostatically by the negatively charged filtering cells in the kidney)—or because, after the drug is filtered by the kidney from the blood, it can simply slip back into the bloodstream by crossing the membranes that line the tubules of the kidney. \n\nHow does the body remedy this? The answer is, in most circumstances, by allowing the drug to be metabolized—which can often make the drug molecule smaller, less fat-soluble, or simply more likely to be eliminated through the bile or the urine. Metabolism also allows certain drugs to become activated or deactivated.\n\nDrugs that are metabolized in the liver are therefore usually too fat-soluble, large, or negatively charged to be eliminated by the kidney. They are also typically drugs that are taken in through the gut (that is, in most cases, you swallow the drug) or otherwise end up circulating in the bloodstream. The liver has specialized enzymes that oxidize (take negatively charged electrons away from), hydrolyze (break down), and conjugate (bind other molecules together with) the drug in the body—and only certain drugs can interact with these enzymes.\n\nOther drugs have a higher affinity for enzymes that are present either in the blood or in other tissues around the body (like nerve or muscle). For example, the commonly used paralytic drug succinylcholine is broken down by the enzyme pseudocholinesterase, which circulates in the bloodstream.\n\nStill other drugs break down by themselves or don't need any metabolism at all. Lithium, which is most commonly used today to stabilize the mood in patients with subtypes of bipolar disorder, enters the body as a lithium salt (which becomes simple ionized lithium after getting dissolved in the blood) and exits the body in the urine as a lithium salt. No metabolism necessary! \n\nAs a final note, remember that many drugs that we use don't (or, rather, shouldn't) fully enter the bloodstream at all. Most creams or ointments applied to the skin, for instance, are not meant to be used in amounts that can actually make it to the rest of the body."
]
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[],
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57eygu | How does the revised galaxy count effect Dark Matter? | Hi All
I was just wondering how the revised galaxy count effects the issue of dark matter. As I understand it dark matter makes up a large proportion of the universe we cannot see, do the extra galaxies go any way towards removing the need for dark matter? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/57eygu/how_does_the_revised_galaxy_count_effect_dark/ | {
"a_id": [
"d8ro0jj",
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"text": [
"No the gaaxy count does not matter at all for the dark matter hypothesis. In order to be able to explain the scalar power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background you already need to assume something like dark matter. Since the CMB stems from a time before galaxies even formed, the galaxy number must be irrelevant for the necessity of something like dark matter.",
"I don't think it makes a difference. The \"missing\" matter was originally postulated as galaxies were rotating faster than they should with the observable matter. Based on their rotational speed and observed mass they should be flinging themselves apart. Hence the need for more mass to gravitationally hold them together. Mass which we can't see. Hence dark matter.\n\nThe fact that there are potentially more galaxies doesn't change this. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
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|
1acdlx | Are octopuses equally skilled with each arm or do they prefer one or more arms over the others like humans? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1acdlx/are_octopuses_equally_skilled_with_each_arm_or_do/ | {
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"c8w9k0z"
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"text": [
"[This abstract](_URL_0_) of an article from the *Journal of Comparative Psychology* (J Comp Psychol. 2006 Aug;120(3):198-204.) indicates that researchers did find evidence for octopuses favoring particular limbs.\n\nFull abstract:\n\n > Previous behavioral studies in Octopus vulgaris revealed lateralization of eye use. In this study, the authors expanded the scope to investigate arm preferences. The octopus's generalist hunting lifestyle and the structure of their arms suggest that these animals have no need to designate specific arms for specific tasks. However, octopuses also show behaviors, like exploration, in which only single or small groups of arms are involved. Here the authors show that octopuses had a strong preference for anterior arm use to reach for and explore objects, which points toward a task division between anterior and posterior arms. Four out of 8 subjects also showed a lateral bias. In addition, octopuses had a preference for a specific arm to reach into a T maze to retrieve a food reward. These findings give evidence for limb-specialization in an animal whose 8 arms were believed to be equipotential."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16893257"
]
]
|
||
cv7dfh | How do stimulants affect your heart rate? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/cv7dfh/how_do_stimulants_affect_your_heart_rate/ | {
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"ey2zz83",
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"text": [
"Stimulants increase the activity of the sympathetic nervous system. They increase or mimic the action of adrenaline. Basically, there are 3 types of stimulants:\n\n- Releasing agents (like cocaine) release more adrenaline.\n\n- Reuptake inhibitors (like amphetamine) prevent the removal of adrenaline.\n\n- Direct agonists (like ephedrine) directly bind to adrenaline receptors.\n\nThe receptor in the heart muscle in called B1 (beta-1). When adrenaline binds to this receptor, it increases the heart inotropy (contraction force) and chronotropy (contraction speed). Beta-blockers have the opposite effect, since they block the B1-receptor.",
"Stimulants can increase the Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which secrets more norepinephrine and epinephrine (adrenaline) into the sympathetic nervous systems. The rest is already explained in this discussion."
]
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[],
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||
703fyj | i'm a casual sports watcher. what's the difference between the level of skill/play between the nfl/nba and their ncaa counterparts? | I see it all the time on Reddit, how these college kids aren't ready for the Pros yet, how college basketball stars get smoked (them saying this not me) by NBA regulars in street pick up games that get posted on social media, etc.
My question is WHY and HOW.
Some of these colleges they literally live and die on their sports programs, and they have tens of millions in endowments. What does the NFL and NBA have to train their players to their level of skill that the NCAA doesn't?
Why is the gap in skill that big, considering both organizations have access to a ridiculous amount of money? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/703fyj/eli5im_a_casual_sports_watcher_whats_the/ | {
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"text": [
"Well, \"Some of these colleges they literally live and die on their sports programs\" isn't really true. Their educational efforts are perhaps not as splashy, but they are the university's enduring accomplishment.\n\nThe big difference is that there are 347 NCAA Division I teams. That means each team has 1/347^th of the good players. They only get to keep them for 4-5 years, and then the 30 NBA teams pick the best ones. Then the best players play for a decade. So the NBA team has 10X the selectivity over 2X the number of years. One could expect them to be 20 times better.",
"There is a skill gap, although the top college players are going to be better than the worst pros.\n\nThe biggest difference is skill consistency. Every NFL starter is one of the top 100 players in the **world** at their position. The difference between the best and the worst isn't that great. But in college, a starter the in the top 1000 of people who happened to have been born in a certain 4-5 range, a lot less exclusive. That means every college team is going to have holes in it, and the #1 RB is going to look pretty good running over the #1000 linebacker. The same player is going to face a learning curve facing even #100 in the pros.\n\n > My question is WHY and HOW.\n\nBesides the numbers game:\n\n* physical maturity - males can continue to grow into their early 20's...a 28-year-old is not only done growing, but they have had a few years to get used to their final form\n* physical conditioning - it can take a few years for even a fully mature adult to work their way up to top physical condition\n* mental and emotional maturity - college coaches have to waste a lot of time babysitting teen age boy when the could be making them better football players\n* experience - many college players only see the field of a few years of their eligibility, pros can have many years of experience on top of what they learned in college\n* pracitce - college player are more limited in the amount of time they can be required to practice and study\n* resources - pros make a lot of money, and can afford a home gym and a nutritionist and just about anything else they need to make themselves better",
"Well, \"Some of these colleges they literally live and die on their sports programs\" isn't really true. Their educational efforts are perhaps not as splashy, but they are the university's enduring accomplishment.\n\nThe big difference is that there are 347 NCAA Division I teams. That means each team has 1/347^th of the good players. They only get to keep them for 4-5 years, and then the 30 NBA teams pick the best ones. Then the best players play for a decade. So the NBA team has 10X the selectivity over 2X the number of years. One could expect them to be 20 times better.",
"There is a skill gap, although the top college players are going to be better than the worst pros.\n\nThe biggest difference is skill consistency. Every NFL starter is one of the top 100 players in the **world** at their position. The difference between the best and the worst isn't that great. But in college, a starter the in the top 1000 of people who happened to have been born in a certain 4-5 range, a lot less exclusive. That means every college team is going to have holes in it, and the #1 RB is going to look pretty good running over the #1000 linebacker. The same player is going to face a learning curve facing even #100 in the pros.\n\n > My question is WHY and HOW.\n\nBesides the numbers game:\n\n* physical maturity - males can continue to grow into their early 20's...a 28-year-old is not only done growing, but they have had a few years to get used to their final form\n* physical conditioning - it can take a few years for even a fully mature adult to work their way up to top physical condition\n* mental and emotional maturity - college coaches have to waste a lot of time babysitting teen age boy when the could be making them better football players\n* experience - many college players only see the field of a few years of their eligibility, pros can have many years of experience on top of what they learned in college\n* pracitce - college player are more limited in the amount of time they can be required to practice and study\n* resources - pros make a lot of money, and can afford a home gym and a nutritionist and just about anything else they need to make themselves better"
]
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[],
[],
[],
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|
53qvm7 | why people see 'waves' of color in the dark. | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53qvm7/eli5_why_people_see_waves_of_color_in_the_dark/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Because there's light, and your visual centers are doing their thing, but without enough information to make sense of it. \n\nYou might enjoy this article: _URL_0_"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://scienceline.org/2014/12/why-do-we-see-colors-with-our-eyes-closed/"
]
]
|
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2jul65 | How are gasses commercially produced? | For example in oxygen tanks how is this gas produced and then compressed? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2jul65/how_are_gasses_commercially_produced/ | {
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"There are quite a few ways to make gasses, though once a gas is made and purified it is usually compressed using some type of mechanical pump.\n\n\nLets look at oxygen for example. You could use a cryogenic distillation process or [pressure swing adsorption](_URL_0_) to extract oxygen from the air. There are also selectively permeable membranes that can separate oxygen and nitrogen. Alternatively, you could start with water and produce oxygen (and hydrogen) through electrolysis. The method you use will depend on the desired purity and the cost, which can vary wildly depending on the technique and if the gas is a byproduct of another process.\n\nDifferent gasses will require different methods. Nitrogen could be obtained using most of those air extraction methods above, while we generally make hydrogen through reformation of natural gas. Small hydrocarbons like propane come from oil distillation and natural gas sources, and some others like ethylene might need to use specific cracking processes.\n\nOnce you have the gas in the purity you want you either transfer it to a tank if it already has the desired pressure or you can pass it through a pump to get it to the pressure you need. The type and size of the pump would depend on gas species, input and output pressures and flow capacity. Temperature manipulation can also work to move certain species between liquid and gas phases and deal with them that way, or pressure could be used for the same if applicable."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_swing_adsorption"
]
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|
c968cw | why is the amazon being deforested? is it just for the wood or are there other reasons? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c968cw/eli5_why_is_the_amazon_being_deforested_is_it/ | {
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"text": [
"Its to provide grazing land for cattle. And also for palm oil farms. \n\nThey cut down the rainforest then plant either grass or lots of just one type of tree.\n\nIts not really for the wood that much at all."
]
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[]
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||
3dgj12 | At what point could you escape a planet's gravity by jumping? | Gravitational acceleration on earth is about 9.81m/s^2 on the surface. That number is dependant on the mass of the earth and the distance you are from the centre of the earth. On other planets and moons the gravity may be less than that because they are smaller. If the force of gravity is less, then less energy is required to reach escape velocity, so what I'm wondering is: is there a way to determine an approximate gravitational threshold at which it would be possible to escape the planet/moon's gravity simply by jumping? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3dgj12/at_what_point_could_you_escape_a_planets_gravity/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Jump. Measure how high you jump in meters. Call this height \"h\". sqroot(2\\*h\\*9.81) should be your initial velocity. We want this to be equal to escape velocity, which is sqroot(2gr), where g is the surface gravity and r is the radius of the object. Simplify everything, and you get g=9.81(h/r)",
"As others here wrote, the escape velocity is what's most interesting. However, jumping is not the best way to escape from a planet. You can reach far higher speeds running, so the best way to escape the gravitational field of a planet is to run very fast, not to jump"
]
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[],
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a41luk | how does the weather get reported by each town to the weather app on my phone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a41luk/eli5_how_does_the_weather_get_reported_by_each/ | {
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"There are organizations (large groups of people) who have satellites (giant cameras and sensors in outer space) which send the information they find to weather apps.\n\nThe satellites along with local meteorologists (weather analysts) provide information to weather apps, which show you the information they have and their predictions.",
"Meteorologists, either local and or national gather weather data to show the current weather and predict future weather for each town. Your phone then uses your location to find which town your in and pull the weather report for that town. "
]
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[],
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444p8e | if we keep raising the minimum wage then won't it just decrease the value of a dollar and cause to prices to rise because of inflation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/444p8e/eli5_if_we_keep_raising_the_minimum_wage_then/ | {
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"text": [
"It does cause inflation, but minimum wage proponents don't see it that way. Yet uf you look at countries where minimum wage is high, the price of goods is higher as well.\n\nThe reason people want to raise minimum wage is because they feel better about earning more. But usually they just circle back to where they were before.\n\nThere are much better solutions to improving people's welfare, and happiness, where there isn't an adverse effect on purchasing power. A universal healthcare system for example, or public transportation, caps on real estate prices, government run educational institutes, etc. But these are harder to plan, and implement, so politicians tend to just do the easiest thing to placate people, which is not raise wages, but outlaw wages below a certain amount, which is what minimum wage really is. It doesn't mean you make more moeny, it just means that employers can't pay you below that specific amount.\n\n\n",
"the way businesses look at things is \"if people can afford it, then charge what you can get\" so even though some math can show that you just need to raise the cost of certain goods by around $.30 per [dollar](_URL_2_). the thing is that business people will not say \"what is the minimum we can charge to get by\" they say \"what is the absolute maximum we can charge and still keep growth\"\n\nso the short answer is: it doesn't necessarily cause inflation but it makes everyone want to charge more. thing is, minimum wage has not been keeping pace with inflation anyway, purchasing power of the dollar has already been going down. what will really happen is [job loss](_URL_1_) \n\nedit: and another thing, all of this is up for debate, here is the government saying that raising minimum wage won't increase unemployment _URL_0_",
"Increasing the minimum wage does cause inflation, but not at the same rate as the increase. \n\nThe thing to keep in mind is that inflation happens anyway. Not raising the minimum wage is actually decreasing the wage by decreasing buying power. The status quo hurts more people than it helps. ",
"You have it backwards. Increasing minimum wage will do two inflationary things:\n\n1) Cost-push inflation. Employers have to pay more, so costs go up. Low wage employees generally make up a fairly small part of costs for most companies, so this effect is pretty small (eg: a 10% minimum wage increase might produce a 0.5% increase in prices, numbers pulled out of my butt).\n\n2) Demand-pull inflation. Because people have more money, demand goes up. This is a small effect because not everyone is near minimum wage, and demand doesn't really increase inflation much unless the economy is already at full capacity. If a market was already at full capacity, people would be being paid significantly more than minimum wage anyway.\n\nSo, yes, it causes a slight increase in inflation, but nowhere near enough to offset the minimum wage increase. Furthermore, it also stimulates economic growth by getting more money circulating."
]
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"http://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster",
"http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052815/does-raising-minimum-wage-increase-inflation.asp",
"http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/08/what-will-a-higher-minimum-wage-cost-you-at-mcdona.aspx"
],
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||
3tzj1c | is there a laser color stronger than the others? if so, why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tzj1c/eli5is_there_a_laser_color_stronger_than_the/ | {
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"Blue is the strongest colour that we can see because it has the highest frequency of visible light. That means that there is more energy per second being delivered by a blue laser than a red laser. A UV laser would be stronger, and an X-ray laser stronger still.",
"There is no 'stronger colour'.\n\nPhotons with a shorter wavelength (and therefore higher frequency) have a higher energy per photon.\n\nA source of light that emits a higher frequency (closer to UV) doesn't produce a higher intensity of light than one that emits infra red, it emits the same intensity but using fewer photons.",
"I'll just chime in here. Generally, when you talk about light, there's no real technical definition of 'strength'. When compare lasers, generally we refer to the 'power' of a laser, or how much energy it outputs per second. And if it's power we're talking about, then /u/Lazy_Pea is incorrect, and /u/robiwill is right. The power of a laser depends on the method from which the laser is generated, and it does not have a strong dependence on the color.\n\nFor the record, the strongest lasers that exist are chemical lasers, and those are all in the infra-red (lower-wavelength than red) region."
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bz3b8q | Altitude Sickness? How sudden can it take effect, what can happen? | Hello again scientists! So, my latest question is pretty simple. Altitude sickness, how long does it take to have an effect? I'm finding online that it usually takes between 12-24 hours for somebody to feel ill due to a raise of over 8000 feet. Well, what if somebody were suddenly exposed to such an altitude!? What if, for instance, some massive giant were to scoop you up from the ground and raise you, miles above the surface and right up to his own face? Any info, random tangents, strange possibilities etc are more than welcome, thanks for takin' a look! | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bz3b8q/altitude_sickness_how_sudden_can_it_take_effect/ | {
"a_id": [
"eqsxrpi"
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"text": [
"The cabin altitude of most airliners when in the cruise is about 8000ft. For most healthy people being suddenly raised to 8000ft pressure altitude and spending many hours there is a complete non-issue. There are plenty of long haul flights over twelve hours and 17 hours is the longest scheduled service I’m aware of - I’m not hearing of any cases of altitude sickness amongst healthy people."
]
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|
cc674h | octonions - what exactly are they? | I just saw Eric Weinstein talk about them on Joe Rogans podcast, but I couldn’t quite keep up. What exactly are they? Why are they significant? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cc674h/eli5_octonions_what_exactly_are_they/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The complex numbers are a sort of two-dimensional extension of the real number line, with an imaginary axis (i, 2i, 3i, ...) along with the ordinary real axis (1, 2, 3, ...). It turns out that you can extend this idea even farther to have four distinct axes (\"quaternions\"), or eight (\"octonions\"), or sixteen (\"sedenions\"), and so on for any power of 2. While a real number might just look like 3, and a complex number might look like 3+2i, a quaternion could look like 3+2i+4j+6k, where i, j, and k are distinct values with the property that i^2 = j^2 = k^2 = -1. Octonions would then have eight distinct components, one \"real\" component and seven distinct \"imaginary\" components.\n\nThe farther you go with this, the more nice properties about numbers you lose. When you go from the real numbers to the complex numbers, you lose the fact that numbers have a neat linear ordering. When you move from the complex numbers to the quaternions, you lose the fact that multiplication is commutative: for quaternions, it need not be the case that x\\*y = y\\*x. When you move from the quaternions to the octonions, you lose the fact that multiplication is associative: for octonions you aren't even guaranteed to have x\\*(y\\*z) = (x\\*y)\\*z.\n\nDespite the fact that the octonions are both rather abstract and lack many of the properties we expect number systems to have, they show up occasionally in theoretical physics."
]
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2fxamy | why does yeast in bread-making not produce alcohol like yeast in brewing? | I understand that in brewing the yeast eats the sugar and poops out alcohol, but why does this not happen when making bread? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fxamy/eli5_why_does_yeast_in_breadmaking_not_produce/ | {
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"text": [
"It does, a little. But the amount produced is very small - bread rises for a matter of a day or two, brewing can take weeks or months.",
"You can make drinkable alcohol using baking yeast (and great bread using brewers yeast).",
"Both bread yeast and brewers yeast are generally the same species. Brewers yeast however has been selected for positive atributes that it provides to the finished beverage, wheather that be certain flavors or a certain ability to ferment. Brewers yeast is also used through the entire process post boil for imparting flavors. Bakers yeast is killed off by the baking process."
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2weikj | it is a famous brag that England was never successfully invaded after 1066. So why doesn't the Dutch Army lead by William of Orange count? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2weikj/it_is_a_famous_brag_that_england_was_never/ | {
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"This isn't my area of expertise, so someone else might be able to provide a better answer or more references, but as I understand it there are two issues here, one to do with the particular circumstances of William's 'invasion,' and one to do with British conceptions of our own 'history'.\n\nThe simple/traditional answer - ie. the argument that allows one to maintain that England has never been invaded, is that William and Mary were 'invited' to depose the Catholic James II/VII by a group of English peers on behalf of a population which was 'dissatisfied with the present conduct of the government in relation to their religion, liberties and properties.' On this basis, the Dutch army can be seen as only part of what was mainly a civil conflict, and thus it doesn't really 'count' as an invasion.\n\nHowever, to an extent you have already answered the question yourself - the idea that England has never been successfully invaded is a brag, and isn't actually based in much fact; there are plenty of further examples of successful foreign invasions of England, unless one uses an extremely strict definition of invasion. Throughout the middle ages, for example, numerous Scottish armies successfully fought campaigns in England with control over border regions changing hands repeatedly until around 1482, when the English last conquered Berwick-upon-Tweed. Even if we insist on an invasion requiring a change of government, there are further obvious examples. The future Henry IV, for example, took the throne from his cousin Richard II after being exiled to France and making an alliance with the Duke of Orléans, who controlled the French court. Similarly, Henry Tudor had barely even visited England before he left France with a fleet of English exiles and French and Scottish soldiers to take the throne and end the wars of the roses. \n\nThe Tudor example in particular once led my venerable old medieval history tutor to use some less than elegant words to describe the 'little Englanders who maintain that our fair isle has never been sullied by foreign boots'. At the time, I mostly found this amusing because lol teachers swearing, but actually the fact that this myth has developed is interesting in itself. Alas, I have no idea where it came from, so would be interested to hear if anyone else knows.\n\n*Sources*\n\nThe 1688 letter of invasion to William of Orange is in Browning, *English Historical Documents, 1660-1714*\n\n*Oxford Dictionary of National Biography* entries on Henry IV and Henry VII are very good for basic info on their rise to the throne\n"
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2xl9kn | what is the ultimate luminosity? how many photons can we fit in a unit of 3d space? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xl9kn/eli5_what_is_the_ultimate_luminosity_how_many/ | {
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"Interesting question. My first response is an infinite number. Quantum field theory puts no limit on the number of photons that can be in the same place. But quantum field theory doesn't account for the gravity of the photons.\n\nAt some point, you'll have so many photons in one place and so much energy in one place, they'll collapse to form a black hole. The number of photons required for this will depend on their energy and how spread out they are, but it will be an absurdly huge number.\n\nThis would never happen in nature.",
"**TL;DR** infinitely many.\n\nThere are many ways to group particles. One way is whether that particle is a Boson or a Fermion. For example, electrons are Fermions and photons are Bosons. 2 Fermions cannot be in the same space at the same time. But 2 Bosons can. Bosons can literally overlap each other in space. You need special conditions for that to happen, but it can happen, so you can have infinitely many photons in one spot."
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c9ud11 | after a natural disaster, what is the benefit of declaring state of emergency? | Why do states do this and how does it effect insurance claims? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c9ud11/eli5_after_a_natural_disaster_what_is_the_benefit/ | {
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"Not sure about insurance. But declaring a state of emergency will activate funds that have been set aside for clean up, repairs, and other needed things for after a disaster.",
"I know this is pretty far fetched since you're probably wondering about the US scenario, but here in the Philippines (Which is legally patterned after the US anyway) certain insurance clauses and budgetary releases are contingent on the government unit declaring a state of emergency. Specifically, 10% of the annual budget is set aside for use during and after a calamity.",
"There are specific emergency funds that both the State and Federal Governments set aside that legally can only be accessed when a state of emergency has been declared.",
"If a state of emergency is declared, shops cannot increase prices and capitalize off of those who are desperate. IE, It makes it illegal for Wal-Mart to gouge the price of a pack of water from $8.50 to $20.\n\nFun Fact: It also applies to sales. So if Home Depot had generators marked down from $500 to $350 for a random sale, they can’t mark them back up if a SOE is put into effect. Bitches gonna be out there getting their hurricane party on.",
"Budget: state and federal budgets have funds set aside for emergencies. \n\nLegal: certain rights of citizens can be suspended to help manage the crisis (force people out of homes, implement curfews). Decision making gets much more streamlined, allowing the governor to make certain decisions without going to the state congressional member's for approval. \n\nMilitary: for states, this would be the national guard. Without a state of emergency what they are allowed to do is very limited. \n\nMostly; it is allows leadership to sidestep potentially cumbersome oversight to quickly respond to a disaster. This is often abused, as you will see states of emergencies that are still on going after 40 years...."
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2ert10 | When was the ironclad warship firs proposed? | The Gloire and the Warrior are both very famous early ironclads. But who came up with the idea, and who was the driving force to get these revolutionary warships built? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ert10/when_was_the_ironclad_warship_firs_proposed/ | {
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"It's hard to say when the first ironclad warship was proposed, as many people came up with the idea of putting iron plating on warships at many different times. For example, the \"atakebune\" warships of the 16th century Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga allegedly had some form of iron plating on their superstructure. During the early 19th century different people talked about the idea of iron-plated warships, but there was little impetus put into their creation until the Crimean War showed the strength of a type of naval artillery called the Paixhans gun.\n\nDeveloped by French artillery officer Henri-Joseph Paixhans, the Paixhans gun was the first naval cannon to utilize explosive shells. Shells had been used by land artillery for quite some time, but due to the inherently dangerous nature of shells (they are essentially bombs, after all), they had been limited to use in howitzers and mortars. Howitzers and mortars are designed to lob their shots or shells at a high trajectory, and don't need to fire at as high of a velocity as the sort of low-trajectory cannons that were used in ships at the time. Using shells in high velocity cannons was rather risky. Paixhans was able to develop a new fuse mechanism and cannon that made it safe to use explosive shells on naval ships.\n\nThe Paixhans gun was developed in the 1820s and installed on French ships by the 30s, but its first use against enemy ships occurred during the Crimean War. At the naval Battle of Sinop during November 1853, which was the engagement that properly started the war, Russian ships with Paixhans were able to destroy their Ottoman counterparts with ease. Sinop made it clear that wood vessels had no real way to counter these shells, which would lodge themselves in their targets before exploding.\n\nFrance and Britain declared war on Russia after the Battle of Sinop. The French Emperor Napoleon III, who did not want to risk seeing his ships go the way of those Ottoman ships when attacking Russian coastal fortifications (witch also had Paixhans), ordered the construction of armoured floating batteries, assigning the task to the inspector general of naval construction Garnier, a naval engineer named Guieysse, and Commander Favé, an artillery officer. A floating battery is a vessel with very limited mobility (they might be able to move at a few knots in calm seas and were often towed by other ships) but heavy armament. Floating batteries had been used before, but Napoleon III specified that these were to be designed to be able to deal with enemy shell-fire. He proposed that they use chests full of shot (the solid round projectiles fired out of muskets or cannons), but experiments conducted proved that iron plates backed by wood to be superior to cases of shot when dealing with both shells and shot. The French shared their plans with the British admiralty, and in 1855 the ironclad coastal batteries *Lave*, *Tonnante*, and *Dévastation* helped destroy Russian forts at the Battle of Kinburn with minimal causalities. Britain's ironclad batteries arrived too late to see any action.\n\nDuring the 1850s the French sought to build up their navy with the construction of many steamships of all classes, but due to improvements in naval guns and the lessons of the Crimean War, the naval commission tasked with this naval construction decided to halt work on wooden ships-of-the-line and instead try to design ironclad seagoing warships (a process that would require lots and lots of men and experimentation). This culminated in the *Glorie*, designed by the naval architect Henri Dupuy de Lôme and his staff.\n\nRather than crediting one individual, I'd say that the main driving force behind the ironclad was the French Navy as a whole. Given his heavy involvement in the process, though, I suppose one could say that Emperor Napoleon III deserves a fair bit of the credit.\n\nI can't say that I know much about the history of ironclads in the Royal Navy or other navies besides that of the French. If someone does, feel free to elaborate.\n\nSource:\n\n[Baxster, James P. *The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship.* Naval Institute Press, 1933.](_URL_0_)"
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7cgn2s | what holds fingernails in place? how far under the skin do they go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7cgn2s/eli5_what_holds_fingernails_in_place_how_far/ | {
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"Your fingernails and toenails are made up of cells that form into a hard surface called keratin. Keratin is also what makes up your hair and other parts of animals, like horse hooves and rhino horns. Underneath your fingernail is a soft surface called the nail bed. This is what produces the cells that harden and turn into keratin. The nail grows because it works kind of like the plates that make up the Earth’s crust: The nail bed forms new cells, which push on the older ones and make them grow outward. The whole structure inside your finger doesn’t extend much past the bottom of your visible fingernail. ",
"To add to this why don't fingernails hurt when they grow? Shouldn't they tug on the skin underneath? ",
"The nail is generated (grows from) the germinal matrix and grows over the sterile matrix (nail bed).\n\nIf the nail is crushed, injured, or removed, the germinal matrix and nail bed need to be protected . A defect to those structures can cause permanent nail deformities. \n\nSo after a crush injury, it's standard practice to remove the nail and inspect those structures. We use a freer elevator to gently lift it off. Once any repairs are made, the nail is slid back into place and sutured back to hold it as a splint. The nail regrows and pushes the old nail off. \n\nIf there is a nail deformity, we can either remove the nail and attempt to address the deformity, or remove the nail bed and matrix to eliminate the nail regrowth entirely."
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4sz7lr | Why wasn't LVT's used at D-day beach landings? | It has crossed my mind a few times now, and i thought to seek the knowledge of an historian. Also i thought it to be an interesting discussion.
For one, i find it quiet odd. Since it was used to quite an degree in the Pacific theater, judging by the success it had on a lot of the beach landings on island's. I don't see why they didn't use them during the D-day, seeing how they could also be equip with a 37mm and 75mm gun. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4sz7lr/why_wasnt_lvts_used_at_dday_beach_landings/ | {
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"At the time, there was not enough LVTs for use in both the European and Pacific theaters. The initial stages of Operation Forager (the invasion of the Mariana and Palau islands) underwent preparation and execution at about the same time as D-Day, and few of the vehicles could be spared. Redeployment and retraining of amphibian tractor and amphibian tank battalions from the Pacific to European Theaters would have been another issue; drawing these units away could reduce the potential of troops in the Pacific to conduct landings. If LVTs were used on D-Day, it is presumed that only Army units would have been involved. In the first half of 1944, only a single Army amphibian tank battalion existed, the 708th. Activation and training of new units would also take time, up to a year.\n\nThe vast majority of LVT types were not armored at all, having only a thin steel hull.\n\nVersion|Armor|Notes\n:--|:--|:--\nLVT-1|None (9 mm plates added to some vehicles' cabs before Tarawa)|No rear ramp: capacity 18 passengers\nLVT-2|None|No rear ramp; capacity 24 passengers\nLVT(A)-2|6.5 mm on hull, 12.7 mm on cab|Armored version of the LVT-2; no rear ramp; capacity 24 passengers\nLVT(A)-3|Presumably 6.5 mm on hull, 12.7 mm on cab|Proposed armored version of the LVT-4; not produced\nLVT-4|None|Rear ramp; capacity 30 passengers\nLVT(A)-1|6.5 mm on hull, 12.7 mm on cab, turret with armor characteristics of M3A1 light tank|Crew: 6\nLVT(A)-4|6.5 mm on hull, 12.7 mm on cab, turret with armor characteristic of M8 Howitzer Motor Carriage|Crew: 6\n\nAnother consideration is their personnel capacity; early LVTs (LVT-1, LVT-2, LVT(A)-2) could carry only 18 to 24 troops, and they had to jump over the side owing to the fact that there was no rear ramp, slowing their exit from the vehicle. Using these vehicles would have forced a reorganization of the agreed-upon assault infantry battalion structure (6 assault boats per rifle company and 5 support boats for the heavy weapons company, plus a command boat, each of 30 men) More waves of smaller-capacity vehicles slows the execution of the landing \n\nThe LVT-4, capable of carrying 30 men and having a rear ramp, only began production in December 1943. It is doubtful that the logistical priority for the new vehicle would have been given to the European Theater, as LVT-type vehicles were needed and had proved themselves for the frequent invasions of Japanese-held islands in the Pacific Theater.\n\nThe following is purely conjecture, since we do not have any idea how the LVT would have performed in the choppy, currented seas of Normandy. Landings in the Pacific were undertaken only in calm(er) conditions, in which the LVT performed fine. The LVT had quite low freeboard, in comparison to the LCVP and LCM, which were purely boats.\n\nIn combat, the LVT probably would have struggled against heavy German antitank and artillery fire. They probably would have performed a role similar to the LCVP or LCM, dropping off troops at the water's edge and retreating to pick up more. Transport versions of the LVT used this tactic in the Pacific, and generally did not advance beyond the beach, except to move cargo or retrieve wounded when combat had already moved inland. Advancing up the beach with a full load of troops in the rear compartment would have been suicidal; there was no overhead protection, and the installation of an armored roof was only theoretically possible on the (new) LVT-4. In places, they also would have been unable to progress beyond the \"shingle\", a slope of small slippery stones some distance up the beach, that was impossible for tracked vehicles to climb.\n\nSources:\n\n*Amtracs: US Amphibious Assault Vehicles*, by Steven J. Zaloga\n\n[LVT(A)-1](_URL_1_)\n\n[LVT(A)-4](_URL_0_)\n\n\n"
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2mpcso | from newborn onesies to blouses, shirts and pants... why do men's and women's clothing fasten in opposite directions? | I've always noticed that men's shirts have the buttons on the right, while women's have them on the left. Now, I've discovered that even some newborn zipper onesies have the sipper going down one leg or the other depending on if it's made for a boy or a girl. What gives? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mpcso/eli5_from_newborn_onesies_to_blouses_shirts_and/ | {
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"Men's jackets were made to be unbuttoned with their right hand so they could take it off with a cane in one hand. Women were dressed by other people so it's made to be easy for right-handed maids to button them up. Then the tradition stuck ",
"Back in the day wealthy women had numerous cumbersome layers to put on, so they had maids to help them get dressed. As 90% of people are right handed they put the buttons/zippers/whatever on the side easiest for them to work with. Mens clothing wasn't as complicated so their stuff got put on the other side. That has just become a defacto standard in the fashion industry despite the fact that it is no longer relevant. (At least that's what I've been told.)"
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2eg14v | how do these child sex allegations get proven 30+ years later if there is no pictures/videos? e.g cliff richards atm | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eg14v/eli5_how_do_these_child_sex_allegations_get/ | {
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"Rape cases are very difficult to prove especially with no physical evidence.\n\nNot sure who Cliff Richards is, but like when Sandusky got convicted. There were so many people that all told similar stories. It's a he said she said thing, but when so many people are all telling the same story the jury tends to believe the majority of people."
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3nwj4q | Why were the Swedish armies in the 17th and early 18th century so effective/had high morale? | After reading about some wars Sweden was involved and one thing caught my attention. Often the Swedish army was able to defeat a larger enemy. At Fraustadt the 20000 man strong army of Saxons and Russians was broken by a Swedish army half its size. At Narva something similar happened (although weather and bad positioning had some influence there). And at Poltava the cut off Swedish army charged the Russian ranks without ammunition against three times as many enemies.
Although they were utterly defeated it raises the question why the Swedish forces were so much braver than their enemies. Even at Breitenfeld the situation did not look that good but they still managed to win that battle. What was the secret of the Swedish morale? Or what were their enemies lacking? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nwj4q/why_were_the_swedish_armies_in_the_17th_and_early/ | {
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"There is a great previous answer here that should answer your question:\n[How Carolean army was set up and what made it work](_URL_0_)"
]
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33bx3d/how_come_the_armies_of_karl_xii_was_able_to_win/cqjik77"
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8sqhlk | Is Earth losing oxygen? | If we're pumping more and more co2 into the atmosphere and deforesting at a great rate, are we getting less and less oxygen produced, on a planetary scale? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8sqhlk/is_earth_losing_oxygen/ | {
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"Sort of. Most oxygen production on earth happens in the oceans (algae), so loss of forests, while impactful in many ways, isnt going to cause us to suffocate. Increase in CO2 does remove oxygen from the atmosphere through combustion, and we have increase CO2 concentrations substantially, but its still a negligble loss. The Earths atmosphere is ~21% oxygen, and 400 ppm (thats 0.04% of the atmosphere) of CO2. This is up from about 280 ppm pre-industrialization. Even if it got up to 1000 ppm (climate change to the point of palm trees at the poles) it would still not hugely impact the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere as this would reduce it from 21% to 20.99%. "
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fh5jjw | normal "system" memory versus graphics memory | What is the difference between the DDR 3, 4 or 5 you install as system memory and the GDDR 4, 5, 5X or 6 used in graphics cards? What makes each of them better for their respective applications? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fh5jjw/eli5_normal_system_memory_versus_graphics_memory/ | {
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"Graphics memory is designed for ludicrous throughput and custom applications. Graphics cards need access to massive memory bandwidth to do their job, a single 4K frame is ~25 MB and the GPU will be expected to generate at least 60 of them per second requiring a minimum of 12 Gbps of memory bandwidth to achieve 60 FPS at 4k. If you want to run 8x FSAA(full scene anti-aliasing) then you need to generate each frame at 8x the resolution or 32K equivalent and then down sample it. This gives you 1.6 GB **per frame** and 768 Gbps of required memory bandwidth. The Graphics RAM on a GPU serves as its input buffer storing textures that it needs to reference during rendering and storing the finally rendered scene.\n\nBecause of this insane bandwidth requirement, GPUs often talk to several chips in parallel so they can have up to 512 bit wide memory buses so each clock edge can give them 512 bits of data and then they run at quite high frequencies. An nVidia 2080 TI has a memory bandwidth of 4,928 Gbps.\n\nStandard memory is designed to be compatible with every system, as such it has an agreed upon bus width (64 bits) and frequency set. While it will sometimes have lower latency than graphics ram and is generally significantly cheaper per GB, even the fastest stick of DDR4 can only give you 200 Gbps, but this is more than enough because your CPU isn't handling huge quantities of data generally. Its restricted on doing math on what it can fit in its L1 and L2 cache, everything else is a longggg wait for a CPU."
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8wir82 | Why did exotic exploration seem quite popular around the turn of the century? | Is there a name for this time period that started sometime in the 1800s and lasted until about the 40s, in which exploration of the world seemed to be quite notable?
Around this time there were many European colonies in Africa and Europeans made archaeological discoveries in Egypt. Teddy Roosevelt explored the Amazon, exotic goods were being exported throughout the world.
Safaris and game hunting became popular among the rich. India was at the height of colonial rule.
Books and movies made this time popular, in ways being depicted in Indiana Jones, Tintin, and many more.
The only thing is, I don’t know what this golden age of exploration is. Why did it come about and what certain events made it what it was? I find it to be very intriguing and I would love to know more about it, or if there are any books or movies, etc, that I can reference. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8wir82/why_did_exotic_exploration_seem_quite_popular/ | {
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"[1/2]\n\nUnlike the so-called \"Age of Exploration,\" this period doesn’t have a codified name, in part because I don’t think that it has as large a place in our popular narrative of \"history of Western civilization\" the way that earlier explorers like Columbus, Magellan, and others do. However, that doesn’t make that we can’t talk about it. My answer here is going to focus on Britain and the British Empire specifically, both because that’s where my area of expertise lies and because they were all over the globe and had an intense interest in exploration and the \"adventures\" of these explorers and the knowledge they gained permeated British popular culture. However, the British weren’t alone in this endeavor, and French, Americans, and other nationalities took part. This topic is just too broad for me to go into detail in all times and in all places, so I’m going to try and zero in on a few specific examples that I think are illuminating and also talk some about the popular culture aspect. \n\nAs you hinted at when you said that India was at the height of colonial rule, all of this exploration was a facet of imperialism. While the British and other Europeans set out to conquer the globe, they wanted information about the places they were colonizing—clear definition of borders, knowledge of the local geography, and a catalogue of potentially-exploitable resources.\n\nHowever, this white European incursion (particularly into the African interior) wasn’t just driven by practical considerations that would assist the running of empires. The Victorians in particular had a huge appetite for knowledge and a desire to describe and classify the world. \n\nI’m going to pause here with a disclaimer because this answer is going to be discussing \"knowledge\" and \"science\" a lot, and I want to be clear that I’m talking about white European knowledge and ways of knowing. Obviously, the indigenous people who lived in the places being systematically explored for the first time by white Europeans knew their own landscapes and environments, and European exploration pretty much always relied on local guides and porters. \n\nThat said, this drive to increase European knowledge was an outgrowth of what the Victorians believed to be a rational, scientific mindset that would add to the huge knowledge-base of British civilization. I’m going to quote a passage from Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella *Heart of Darkness*, both because it’s exactly the time period you’re asking about and because I think it’s instructive: \n\n > Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, 'When I grow up I will go there.' The North Pole was one of these places, I remember. Well, I haven't been there yet, and shall not try now. The glamour's off. Other places were scattered about the hemispheres. I have been in some of them, and... well, we won't talk about that. But there was one yet—the biggest, the most blank, so to speak—that I had a hankering after.\n\nThe speaker, Marlow, then goes on to describe the Congo River and eventually goes there, where most of the book is set. We can see in this passage that as a young boy, Marlow wanted to fill in all the blank spaces on the map. Marlow is, of course, a fictional character created by Conrad, but Marlow wasn’t a weird child but rather emblematic of his culture in nineteenth century British—part of the British imperial project was indeed filling in the maps (preferably with red or pink, the color used to denote British imperial holdings). This is all to say that geography, scientific knowledge, and empire are all enmeshed with each other such that you can’t really untangle them. Added onto this was an ideology of \"civilization,\" in which imperialists also believed they were spreading their superior civilization by making contact with indigenous peoples (and in some cases converting them to Christianity). \n\nThe case of Dr. David Livingstone seems instructive here. The phrase \"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?\" is still famous, but most people don’t know why. Livingstone was a Scottish doctor and Congregationalist missionary who spent extensive time in Africa. Livingstone represents the complicated admixture of imperialism, humanitarianism, and science that often underpinned these explorations. Livingstone began his career as a missionary intending to convert Africans to Christianity and eventually led scientific expeditions mapping the African interior. He was the first known European to see Victoria Falls and did much work mapping the Zambezi River (through much of what is today Zambia) with the backing of the British government. \n\nThese expeditions made Livingstone a hero in the eyes of the British public. He represented, to them, the best of Victorian society, a missionary with a sharp scientific mind making discoveries for the good of the nation. Livingstone used his fame to oppose the Arab slave trade in East Africa. \n\nIn 1866, Livingstone returned to Africa with the intention of locating the source of the Nile River. Keeping in mind that this was before technology like satellites and GPS that aid in mapping and that much of the interior of the African continent was still unknown to Europeans, this was a topic of debate amongst explorers and geographers. The source of the Nile had been identified by John Hanning Speke and Richard Francis Burton (other explorers who both could be subjects of their own posts entirely) as Lake Victoria, but Livingstone disagreed and set out to prove them wrong. (Speke and Burton were more or less correct, by the way, but even a quick perusal of the Wikipedia page on the source of the Nile will give you an idea of why there was so much confusion; several other rivers feed into Lake Victoria itself.) Livingstone was soon in the African interior without contact with the British, and as the years wore on without his return, the public began to worry about him. \n\nEnter Henry Morton Stanley, a Welsh-American whom the *New York Herald* paid to look for Livingstone while sending dispatches about his journey. Stanley's dispatches were a sensation in the press, and he eventually found Livingstone in the town of Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, hence \"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?\" (Since Livingstone was the only white guy around, it wasn’t hard to figure out who he was.) Livingstone chose to stay in Africa, continuing to search for the source of the Nile, and eventually died there. Stanley returned to tell his story and became an explorer in his own right, though his reputation is considerably darker than Livingstone's, despite some attempts to rehabilitate him by biographers such as Tim Jeal. When you help King Leopold of Belgium establish the Belgian Congo, one of the most brutal of imperial regimes, history doesn’t look kindly on you. He also had something of a reputation for personal cruelty to his African workers, which doesn’t help. "
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1d2yrf | If photons are Massless bundles of concentrated electromagnetic energy, why is there an interaction with electrons and light? Why don't photons just pass straight through objects instead of reflecting off of them? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1d2yrf/if_photons_are_massless_bundles_of_concentrated/ | {
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"What holds human-size objects together is electromagnetic forces (electric, mostly) and quantum effects. It's not mass. Solid objects are solid due to molecular forces, which are electric in nature (built on a quantum scaffolding).\n\nSo photons have plenty of stuff to interact with.\n\nAlso, about that \"massless\" thing - photons only lack *rest* mass. They do have energy just like any other particle, and \"energy\" is just another way of saying \"mass\".\n\nThe rest mass is just a number. Any particle has variable amounts of energy (mass), depending on how quickly it moves relative to you. They move faster - they have more energy (or mass). They move slower, they have less. When particles are sitting still relative to you, their energy (or mass) is at a minimum, and it's called rest mass (or rest energy).\n\nPhotons can't sit still. They can only move. Therefore, the rest mass concept does not apply here. That's all.\n\n_URL_0_",
" > If photons are Massless bundles of concentrated electromagnetic energy ...\n\nFirstly, it should be said that photons are *not* \"bundles of concentrated electromagnetic energy\" really. Energy does not have a tangible existance that can be \"bundled;\" energy is just a *property* that systems have -- a property that happens to be conserved when two systems interact.\n\nPhotons have other properties *besides* energy, including spin and momentum, among others. So, it is wrong to think of photons as if they were just \"pure energy packets.\"\n\nNow, on to your question ...\n\n > why is there an interaction with electrons and light?\n\nBecause electrons are charged, and light interacts with anything that is electrically charged.\n\nMoving charges disrupt the electromagnetic field. Photons *are* those propagating disturbances in the field.\n\n > Why don't photons just pass straight through objects instead of reflecting off of them?\n\nThis *does* happen for neutral objects. For *perfectly* neutral particles such as neutrinos, there is no interaction *at all*, and photons would pass straight through any number of neutrinos.\n\nFor *mostly* neutral particles such as neutrons or neutral atoms/molecules (which are made up of charged particles, but the charges cancel out), there can be interaction with one of the parts, but the rate and strength of those interactions depends on the various properties of those atoms. Light passes pretty much straight through air, but in a semiconductor light will interact with electrons and cause them to displace, creating a current. Some molecules such as water are also electrically polar, which complicates things."
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49hkaa | if you're not supposed to eat or drink before midnight before a surgery, what about emergency surgeries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49hkaa/eli5_if_youre_not_supposed_to_eat_or_drink_before/ | {
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"In a regular surgery, the idea is to make the procedure as uncomplicated as possible, hence the restrictions.\n\nIn emergency surgery, the concern is keeping people alive. As such, there may be extra complications in the surgery that may be due to something they have drank/eaten, but it usually pales in comparison to the complications that require you to have emergency surgery.",
"In an emergency you do what you have to do, you're already dealing with an operation that's being performed under suboptimal conditions. Planned or elective surgery is different, you can take precautions to minimize risks. The concern generally is in case the patient vomits while under general anesthesia, the airways and lungs could be blocked.\n\nTake an extreme example, someone comes in from dinner, and needs a coronary artery bypass because they're suffering a heart attack, or maybe an industrial accident and someone's got a major injury. If they waited until the food passed the stomach, the patient would be dead and there would be no need to operate.",
"The concern is vomiting during anesthesia, and the chance that since most of your body's normal reflexes have been shut down, some of that vomit may be inhaled into the lungs. During emergency surgery, they take extra measures to deal with this if and when it happens, but this adds risk to the surgery. \n & nbsp; \nThe reason that this extra risk is acceptable, but only in emergencies and not in voluntary, pre-scheduled surgeries, is that in an emergency situation, the overall risk to the health of the patient if the surgery would be performed is much greater than the risk from accepting there's a chance the patient may vomit."
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15beye | Do black holes have "layers" of light around them? | Since the event horizon of black holes implies that light can be sucked into a black hole and not escape, is there a region around a black holes where it has rings/spheres/layers of light in orbit around them?
If so, then I guess that light hasn't past the event horizon, thus it might escape after a certain number of orbits; could we use this to see the same star or other luminous body as it was at two very different (past) times? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15beye/do_black_holes_have_layers_of_light_around_them/ | {
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"Yes. It is called the [photon sphere](_URL_0_) (two of them actually...see link). Basically this is an area where light orbits the black hole instead of falling in or flying away.\n\nHowever, it is a very precarious balance to get a photon to do that so they will rarely make more than a few orbits before either falling in to the black hole or flying away.\n"
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pypo0 | Why is nitrogen fixation evolutionarily beneficial? | We all know how important nitrogen fixation is in the nitrogen cycle. What I am interested in is what benefits the nitrogen fixing bacteria actually get from the whole process. It seems to be an extremely energy intensive process (~8 ATP per NH3) without a significant reward in terms of return on investment, other than usable nitrogen of course. Is there something I am missing? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pypo0/why_is_nitrogen_fixation_evolutionarily_beneficial/ | {
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"It's beneficial because it allows the organisms to survive in the absence of oxygen. In that case, they use nitrogen as the final electron acceptor (instead of O2). Keep in mind that the enzymes regulating nitrogen fixation are O2 sensitive, and genes that produce those enzymes are inhibited in the presence of oxygen. So when it is present, they will use it as the electron acceptor, if not, then the nitrogen fixation genes are turned on and allow the usage of nitrogen as the electron acceptor."
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eda6a0 | Has there been a higher peak than Mt. Everest on Earth throughout its history? | Im not thinking a higher mountain in total like the Mauna Kea, but rather from sea level upwards. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/eda6a0/has_there_been_a_higher_peak_than_mt_everest_on/ | {
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"This is one of the most asked questions in the Earth Sciences category on this sub, for example, here are a variety of answers to this question (or flavors of this question): [1](_URL_13_), [2](_URL_14_), [3](_URL_6_), [4](_URL_12_), [5](_URL_15_), [6](_URL_9_), [7](_URL_1_), [8](_URL_8_), [9](_URL_2_), [10](_URL_16_), [11](_URL_7_), [12](_URL_0_), [13](_URL_3_), [14](_URL_10_), [15](_URL_11_), and more that I got tired of linking.\n\nIn short (and without rehashing all of these answers or parsing out the spurious ones), there are a variety of mechanisms / properties that impose limits on the height of mountain ranges on average and the height of individual peaks within those ranges. These limits are not precise (despite what some comments in the various links above suggest) and depend a lot on the details, many of which are hard to estimate for extant mountain ranges let alone past mountain ranges. With that uncertainty in mind, we generally think that the Himalaya represent something near the limit of the absolute height mountain ranges can reach. In terms of quantitatively estimating the height of past mountain ranges, there are techniques that allow us to make rough estimates (e.g. [paleoaltimetry](_URL_4_), [geothermobarometry](_URL_5_), etc), but in general these would only tell us about the average elevation of a range (and with pretty large uncertainties again), not the height of individual peaks. Thus, **the question isn't really answerable**.",
"At the equator there are like 10 peaks that are further from earths center than Everest.Because of the equatorial bulge, the summit of Mount Chimborazo in the Andes is the point on the Earth that is farthest from the center, and is 2,168 m (7,113 ft) farther from the Earth's center than the summit of Everest.",
"It's not even the highest peak right now.\n\nMeasured from the center of the Earth, Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is taller. That's because of it's location, near the equator. It benefits from the equatorial bulge to get a few extra KM.\n\nMeasured from the base, Mauna Kea in Hawaii is taller. But 6 KM of Mauna Kea is located below sea level.\n\nMount Everest is the tallest mountain measured from sea level, although K2 (also in the Himalayas) is only a little over 200 meters shorter.\n\nThe tallest mountain in the universe (that we know of so far) is Olympus Mons on Mars, which is about 2.5 times taller than Everest. You can stack 2 Everests on top of each other and still not be taller than Olympus Mons. Olympus Mons is so tall that the weight of it pushing down on itself has curled up the edge, even in Mars's reduced gravity.",
"Since no one can answer your question, I thought I could answer a question you didn't ask. You're welcome. I saw a documentary that showed the exact inverse to your query. Apparently the Mediterranean Sea used to be a valley before the ocean broke way at the Strait of Gibraltar. That used to be the lowest spot on Earth, and also the hottest. The documentary was called Earth 4D I believe.",
"You should check out plateaus too. The Tibetan Plateau is the biggest. Plateaus also move up and down like mountains, but with other factors involved. Bouyancy is involved and the plates can move up and down or side to side. It's pretty cool. The Grand Canyon is an elevated Plateau too.",
"Questions about peaks are nice and all, but I'm interested in all the rest. Looking at animations of historical continental drift, I noticed that way back in the day, the planet was basically entirely aquatic. Which makes sense; over time, volcanoes and lava flows accumulated and linked up into continents, creating steadily more \"high ground\" that poked out above the seas. It seems that, at least in the past, volcanoes can make dry land faster than it gets subducted back into the mantle or eroded onto the sea floor, so the amount of dry land has steadily increased.\n\nBut the flip side of this process was that Earth's water, the amount of which has stayed more or less the same, got forced into smaller and correspondingly deeper oceans. An all-ocean Earth would have an average ocean depth of about 2.6 km, compared to today's 3.7 km.\n\nHow far can this continue? How much of the Earth's surface can be land, and how deep, on average, can the oceans get? Or have we already reached some kind of steady state, where any extra land raises the oceans to cover a matching amount of low-lying land?",
"Short answer: Yes\n\nLong answer: Yes, but...\n\nwe most likely can't give examples (at least I cannot).\nMt. Everest exists because the Indian subcontinent is pushing north against Asia. So at some point Mt. Everest didn't exist, and for a long time wasn't as big as it is now.\n\nDuring most of that time there would have been mountains larger than Mt. Everest.\n\n\nNow, if you are asking \"Was there ever a mountain larger than Mt. Everest is now?\" then I highly doubt there is a certain answer. First of all, the only way to fairly measure that, would be by measuring from the centre of the Earth, while adjusting for the equatorial bulge.\n\nThere *are* some remnants of very old mountain ranges that have eroded down to being practically unnoticeable. Those ranges are so old there is no telling how tall they really were.",
"I read somewhere that the very, very old Appalachian mountains In the eastern US COULD have been higher at some ancient time, but it's nearly impossible to tell for sure.\n\nThey are a very old and massive range that has been eroded for as long as they have been around. They haven't seen any new uplift in just about as long. \n\nBut that is all a guess until we get a hold of Bill and Ted's time Machine... or if someone fixes up their old DeLorean",
"Statistically speaking...probably, yeah. The Earth has been around for a while, mountains come and go over spans of some millions of years, and it would be pretty surprising if none of them had ever been taller than Everest.\n\nBut there's probably never been a mountain *much* taller than Everest. The strength of the Earth's crust and the effects of gravity set limits on how tall a mountain can get before it just pushes down into the mantle and stops getting any taller, and as far as we can tell, those limits are pretty close to the current height of Everest. Everest extends to a little under 9000 meters above sea level; quite likely 10000 meters is possible, but 15000 meters isn't, to give ballpark figures. (The conditions that have produced Everest are also close to ideal for mountain formation, which is why pretty much all the world's tallest mountains are in the Himalayas. But there have been some great conditions in the past too, such as when Pangaea was forming some hundreds of millions of years ago.)\n\nThis leaves open the question of whether the Earth has been changing geologically in ways that have increased or decreased the limits on mountain height over time. There are certainly changes that have been going on, but their effect on the limits of mountain height are tough to pin down. Some of them would contribute to greater mountain heights (the Earth's interior being hotter means tectonic plates might have been moving faster, creating greater forces to push mountains up; and the contraction of the Earth as it cools, combined with impacts from interplanetary debris, have also increased its surface gravity slightly over time). Others would contribute to lower mountain heights (the Moon was closer, causing stronger tidal effects in the Earth's crust, which would tend to pull down mountains faster; and the crust being slightly thinner means it would be less effective at supporting the weight of tall mountains).",
"Everest is likely the highest peak ever, solely because high altitude formations are limited by gravity. It’s just simply to extreme past 29,000 feet to have rocks that don’t just simply get weathered away. In fact Everest is on this perfect balance of weathering and isoststic rebound lifting the mountain. \n\nI’m a geomorphologist, not a paleo geologist but this is my understanding \n\nAlso fun fact: when Everest was first surveyed by the brits, they used trig and estimated it to be 29,000 feet exactly but figured no one would believe them so they tacked on 31 feet, just two feet higher than the actual height.",
"When the Earth was still conglomerating out of the protoplanetary material of the solar system, more than 4 billion years ago, there were likely extreme collisions with enormous objects that produced very dramatic “mountain” features, some perhaps hundreds of miles high. One example would be [the likely collision event that created the Earth’s moon](_URL_0_), which is theorized to have involved an object roughly the size of Mars striking our pre-Earth at an angle. The aftermath of such a collision would have enormous divergences from the shape of the spherical home we know today. But all of these would be very short-lived, for the same reasons discussed elsewhere in this thread - perhaps projecting for “just” a few million years before being pulled back down by gravity and geological processes. Until then, though, the Earth may have looked similar to some celestial bodies we know that have much lower gravity, like some asteroids - shapes like [these](_URL_1_), if scaled up to a body the size of Earth, would imply some very tall mountains indeed!"
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"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bcl6g1/has_earth_had_a_bigger_mountain_than_mount_everest/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bxt3n0/is_there_a_limit_to_the_height_a_mountain_can/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2nhrro/how_high_can_the_earths_plates_be_pushed_upwards/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/amhopy/have_there_been_mountains_taller_than_mt_everest/",
"https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rowley/Rowley/Paleoaltimetry-Intro.html",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermobarometry",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/37t9cz/are_todays_highest_mountain_ranges_the_tallest/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c66a4r/geologists_do_we_know_or_would_it_be_possible_to/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b8ifj3/as_everest_grows_about_1cm_taller_each_year_is/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2salhs/is_it_possible_that_a_mountain_taller_than_the/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bb5o2c/in_the_past_have_there_been_mountains_taller_than/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9nv9yy/do_we_know_if_there_were_any_mountains_bigger/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1sy4k4/how_long_ago_were_the_himalayas_not_the_tallest/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/czvsoj/whats_the_tallest_mountain_chain_to_have_ever/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9ya4ie/will_mount_everest_always_be_the_tallest_mountain/",
"https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1uleyq/is_mt_everest_the_highest_point_on_earth_ever_to/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/174cxr/how_high_was_the_highest_mountain_ever_on_earth/"
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7jqvkr | Why and when did we start bombing civilians in World War II? | According to *The Official History of the Royal Air Force*, on the 4th of September 1940, Hitler said:
> The British drop their bombs indiscriminately and without plan on civilian residential quarters and on farms and villages. For three months I did not reply because I believed they would stop, but in this Mr Churchill saw only a sign of our weakness. The British will know that we are now giving our answer night after night. We shall stop the handiwork of these night pilots.
Three days later, the Luftwaffe began bombing London.
Is it true that Germany did not target civilians before then? Is it true that the British were already targeting civilians? If so, when did the British start deliberately bombing civilians and why?
Thanks to /u/Bigglesworth_ and his [very kind answer](_URL_0_) to my previous question, I am now researching my wife's grandfather's career before his capture.
He was in No. 7 Squadron of Bomber Command, flying in Sterling heavy bombers as a Navigator (which I understand also involved duties as Bomb Aimer). He flew on two sorties then failed to return from his third. The first was to Hanover on 14th July 1941, the second to Cologne on 30th July, and the last to Berlin on 2nd August.
According to the squadron records, both of the first two sorties included dropping incendiary devices and starting fires. Would he have been targeting military/industrial sites, or civilians?
*****
Richards, D., *Official History of the Royal Air Force 1935-1945 — Vol. I — Fight at Odds*, Pickle Partners, 2014. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7jqvkr/why_and_when_did_we_start_bombing_civilians_in/ | {
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"No, that is not true. In the \"Weisung Nr. 17 für die Führung des Luft- und Seekrieges gegen England\" ^[1] from August 2, 1940 Hitler already ordered the Luftwaffe to prioritise the carpet bombing of cities over air-to-air combat and specificially included \"Terrorangriffe\" against civilians. Germany had also used similar tactics in Poland, in the very first months of the war.\n\nThe british strategic bombing campaign that included \"morale bombing\", i.e. deliberately bombing cities to damage the morale of the German population started in 1942, after the so-called \"dehousing paper\", written by Frederick Lindemann, was sent to Churchill on March 31 and then discussed and ultimately ratified by the parliament.\n\nThe idea that Germany was only reacting to british morale bombing is a myth spread by Hitler himself on numerous occasions. A famous example is the accidental bombing of Freiburg in May 1940 by German bombers that Hitler used as \"proof\" of \"terrorist\" attacks started by Churchill^[3].\n\n\n[1] Walther Hubatsch: Hitlers Weisungen für die Kriegführung 1939–1945\n\n[2] Norman Longmate: The Bombers. The RAF offensive against Germany 1939-1945\n\n[3] Freiburger Zeitung, December 11, 1940 (_URL_0_)",
"The first year of the war saw what Richard Overy puts rather well as \"the slow erosion of any relative moral constraints that might have acted to limit the damage to civilian targets\" (*The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945*, very well worth picking up on both Allied and German bombing offensives and the military and civil defence responses).\n\nIn September 1939 there was great caution in the use of British bombers. Leo Amery, an early proponent of bombing Germany, recorded in his diary that: \"... our Air Force are still not allowed to bomb Essen or even set fire to German forests. In the coffee room I tackled Kinglsey Wood [Secretary of State for Air] on this. He was very stuffy and evidently has been responsible for all this\". A later, possibly apocryphal, account has Wood responding to the question of why the Black Forest wasn't being bombed with \"Are you aware that it is private property?\" Bomber Command was restricted to German naval targets, but still not even permitted to bomb ships in dock for fear of missing and hitting civilians.\n\nMay 1940 saw Chamberlain, who had always opposed bombing urban targets, replaced with Churchill, historically a supporter of independent strategic bombing; Churchill's deputy Clement Attlee was also strongly in favour of raids on Germany. On 15th May the Cabinet approved strategic bombing of German targets where civilians *might* be casualties as long as the objective was military.\n\nThe early employment of the Luftwaffe was fundamentally operational, against targets in connection with land forces, but there were heavy civilian casualties in Warsaw and Rotterdam in 1939 and 1940, both bombed while under siege. There is debate over whether civilians were intentionally targeted to affect morale, or if civilian casualties were an inadvertent but inevitable result of the inaccuracy of bombing at the time (see, for example, Bas von Benda-Beckmann's *A German Catastrophe? German historians and the Allied bombings, 1945-2010* that includes accounts of historians arguing the legality of Luftwaffe operations compared to the RAF). Likewise the Blitz of 1940-41 against London and other industrial cities was primarily aimed at military and economic targets, but with large volumes of incendiary bombs and proximity of workers housing to docks and factories heavy civilian casualties were again inevitable, easily perceived as the objective of the attacks.\n\nBomber Command, meanwhile, had much greater problems with accuracy; never mind distinguishing between factories and nearby housing, with much longer ranges to cover and fewer navigational aids just getting within five miles of a target was a rarity (a famous report of 1941 found that, over Germany, three out of four bombers failed to find their targets; on moonless or hazy nights fourteen out of fifteen). Although, in theory, they were aiming at military and industrial targets, from the German perspective they were indeed indiscriminate attacks on \"residential quarters and farms and villages\" (or more often open countryside); the first attack on Berlin on the night of 25th/26th August destroyed a wooden summer house in a suburban garden and slightly injured two people, more bombs fell in surrounding farms leading Berliners to joke \"Now they are trying to starve us out.\"\n\nBoth sides framed their own efforts as precision attacks on purely military targets and enemy action as indiscriminate terror bombing of civilians, backed up by historical precedent (in Britain the long-range bomber and Zeppelin attacks of the First World War, the actions of the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War, and Warsaw and Rotterdam; in Germany the naval blockade of the First World War and seemingly random bomber attacks). Bomber Command steadily widened the definition of military and military-economic targets; in September 1940 they suspended the policy of returning to base or jettisoning bombs if a primary target could not be hit in favour of bombing any target of opportunity, finally in October with the Blitz in full swing Bomber Command were authorised to attack, in addition to military-industrial targets, \"enemy morale\" through \"heavy material destruction in large towns\", though they were scarcely in a position to undertake such an effort until 1942 as they learned from Luftwaffe attacks and started to use heavy concentrations of aircraft, large high explosive bombs and substantial quantities of incendiaries. German efforts against Britain almost completely tailed off after the Blitz, later attacks were more efforts at retaliation for the ever-heavier Allied attacks (tip-and-run fighter-bomber attacks on the south coast, the 'Baedeker Blitz' of 1942, V-weapons from 1944). \n\nMarch 1941 saw Bomber Command diverted to focus on naval targets, with the Battle of the Atlantic at a crucial period, until July when they were were allowed to return to what they saw as their main task, attacking the German transportation system and the morale of the civil population. *The Bomber Command War Diaries* has the target of the 14th/15th Hanover mission as \"a rubber factory and the city centre\". The 30th/31st mission to Cologne was in bad weather, thunderstorms and icing were encountered, Cologne was \"believed hit\"; German records show 6 buildings were damaged, no casualties.\n\nIt's a little lightweight (and entirely neglects other aircraft in favour of the Lancaster) but the BBC did a documentary a few years back, *[Bomber Boys] (_URL_0_)*, with the McGregor brothers where (as I recall) Ewan acted as a navigator, if that might be of interest, it might be available on YouTube.\n"
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408xe5 | Was Ho Chi Minh Really A Tyrant? | I've been looking around a bit for information on the Vietnam war. It always seemed to me like the US government's offensive against Minh's regime was a bit of a knee jerk reaction. As Ho Chi Minh didn't seem nearly as volatile as say Mao or Stalin, was it out of fear for a regime like that, that the US stepped in or was there more to it and Minh's policies that I'm missing? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/408xe5/was_ho_chi_minh_really_a_tyrant/ | {
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"Ho Chi Minh is a difficult figure to analyze because he deliberately cultivated at least two different personalities. The first was of the kindly, elder nationalist and father to the nation. But he also was a committed communist internationalist. He was both. Not one or the either. But, this is precisely why the Indochinese Communist Party chose him as their leader. Men like [Tran Phu](_URL_2_) and [Truong Chinh](_URL_0_), (‘Long March') were committed internationalists that would alienate potential non-communist allies.\n\nThe debate about Ho Chi Minh is tied up in the politics of the war. In the late 1960s-70s scholars opposed to the Vietnam War, consciously and subconsciously, used their scholarship on Vietnam as a means to oppose American policies in Indochina. Following the orientalist work of a French scholar Paul Mus, Frances Fitzgerald wrote *Fire in the Lake*. This became the ‘Orthodox' view of the war. Ho Chi Minh represented the only authentic nationalism in Vietnam, combining nationalism with Confucian values. He and other Vietnamese had adopted communism only as a means to liberate their country. But they were *not really* communists. All Vietnamese understood this, and therefore the artificial South Vietnamese regime and US were fighting against the course of history. At the same time, there were writers like Douglas Pike producing much more critical studies of Vietnamese communism that supported US policies. More recently, a ‘Revisionist’ group of writers, most well known in Mark Moyar’s *Triumph Forsaken*, that argues that Washington had it right all along. Their policies in Vietnam were wrong, only in that they gave up too soon. Ho was just a brutal autocrat.\n\nBoth views are inadequate. Frances Fitzgerald and the Orthodox view is orientalist and simplistic. It’s rather insulting to Ho and other Vietnamese. They were intelligent, rational, and believed in socialist modernity -- to say they chose communism because it was their only choice is false and insulting. And the Revisionist view of Ho as communist Asian despot is just as simplistic and problematic.\n\nBefore I get to Ho’s actions, I want to note that during the period you reference in your question, the American period of Vietnam’s civil war from ~1965-1972, Ho Chi Minh was only a figurehead. He held no real power. It was a man from southern Vietnam named Le Duan who held control. Le Duan was transparently aggressive both in escalating the Vietnam war, and domestically against opponents in the communist Vietnamese Workers Party that opposed his war in South Vietnam. Ho at this time was limited to making public trips to visit allies like Mao, Kim Il-Sung, etc, serving as the regime’s kind public face, and little else. But he chose to continue on as the figure head.\n\nHowever, Ho was never all powerful, not even in the 1940s. He faced strong domestic pressure from the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) members who wanted a more communist regime from the start. Ho’s ambassador to France, Tran Ngoc Danh, even defected to the Soviet bloc and wrote scathing reports to the USSR citing Ho’s lack of commitment to communism. There were factions inside Vietnam opposed to Ho’s attempts to form a united front that could attract non-communists as well.\n\nThis would soon change after 1949. But first, I want to note that the Viet Minh front group, run by the ICP, was indeed brutal towards its opponents. From the moment the Vietnamese civil war began in 1945, before the French returned, the ICP was killing Vietnamese rivals (and some of their rivals were killing ICP and Viet Minh). Many were executed in the first weeks, and fighting between the Viet Minh and rival religious and political groups persisted. Ho was complicit in this, but certainly was not deeply involved, and in some cases would have opposed it. Local ICP leaders were often running their own show. While Ho was in Paris negotiating in 1946, Vo Nguyen Giap attacked the armed forces of non-communist revolutionary groups (with the complicity of the French army). After that point, there was no real opposition to the ICP within the revolutionary Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) government.\n\nThe other main charge against Ho comes from the bloody land reform that took place in 1953-54. After 1949, China began supplying the DRV with weapons and advisors. Not long after China and the USSR formally recognized Ho’s government. No longer needing the support of the non-communists in the countryside, the ICP came back into the open as the Vietnam Workers Party (VWP) and began instituting communist policies. Much control was ceded to the Chinese ‘experts', who guided the VWP’s policies and held ultimate control. But the VWP was also an enthusiastic participant, eager to embark on its path to modernization.\n\nThe land reform was a vicious affair. Based on the Chinese land reform model, a set percentage of the Vietnamese population was determined to be exploitative landowners. Cadres went into the countryside and met this quota. They incited the population to denounce landowners, coached their opinions. After this a [staged trial](_URL_1_\n ) took place under portraits of Stalin, Mao, and Ho. The cadres then carried out a death sentence on behalf of the people. The method varied, sometimes employing a sword or gun, in some cases people were burned alive. Even revolutionary figures who had owned land were targeted. A woman named Nguyen Thi Nam was one of the first executions — the intended message that even if you supported the revolution, it would not absolve your class crimes. The toll of this is unknown. Based on research in Vietnamese archives, it’s likely at least 20,000 were killed. It could be higher toward 50,000. We won’t know unless the current regime falls and we have access to all the records.\n\nWhere is Ho in all of this? Well we know very little about decision-making in the government. For ‘Orthodox' writers favorable to Ho in their critiques of US policy, the tendency is to downplay these abuses, eliminate their ideological character, and and say that Ho was powerless at this time. I should note that these are often Americanists who do not know much about Vietnam and haven’t researched there. Perhaps representative, in his Pulitzer winning book *Embers of War*, Fredrik Logevall writes that land reform was to end food shortages, and Ho was powerless, overtaken by extreme elements (no mention of the Chinese advisors), and opposed Nguyen Thi Nam’s execution. Yet another historian Alex-Thai Vo, has shown that Ho Chi Minh published a vicious denunciation of Nguyen Thi Nam that approved of her execution. He may have even attended the trial. \n\nDid Ho full-hearted approve of this, or was he simply falling in line? Much like the assassinations of non-communist rivals, perhaps he was not enthusiastic about these things. But nevertheless he participated and lent his support. The same can be said of the DRV/North Vietnam’s suppression of academic freedom. In an infamous incident called the Nhan Van Giai Pham affair, the regime arrested or ostracized some of the country’s most prominent writers and intellectuals because they had called for freedom of expression or mild reforms in 1955-56.\n\nWas the DRV an oppressive police state? Yes. It remained so after the war, though much less so than the 1940s-80s. Was American involvement driven by that rationale? No. It had much more to do with geopolitics. And while the government of South Vietnam was a freer society than its northern counterpart, it still committed its fair share of abuses and arrested opponents for nothing more than speaking against it. That however did not dissuade the US from supporting South Vietnam."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%E1%BA%A7n_Ph%C3%BA"
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3yihsu | Why is the factorial of 1/2 equal to sqrt(Pi)/2 but the factorial of both 1 and 0 is equal to 1? | Does this have to do anything with the gamma function?
There are exactly sqrt(Pi)/2 ways to arrange 1/2 objects... yeah, I can't comprehend. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3yihsu/why_is_the_factorial_of_12_equal_to_sqrtpi2_but/ | {
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"The way to extend a function from a smaller domain to a larger one is to find some kind of formula that has the function in it that, in some way, suggests what the function should be at values outside of it's original domain.\n\nLet's say that we want to know what x^(-n) has to be, assuming we only know that x^(n)=x multiplied by itself n times and that x^(0)=1. We know that that x^(a+b)=x^(a)x^(b). This suggests that x^(n)x^(-n)=x^(0)=1. So we have the formula x^(n)x^(-n)=1 and the only thing that is not defined in this is x^(-n). So we can solve for it and arrive at the formula x^(-n)=1/x^(n) and we have successfully defined negative powers in a natural way by using an extension formula. This happens all the time in math.\n\n-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nSo if we want to extend the factorial function to include positive half-integers, then we can do so without imposing any Gamma Function magic. This is done by relating the volume of n-dimensional sphere to factorials. Let's have V(n)=Volume of the n-dimensional sphere of radius 1. So V(1)=2 (this is just the interval [-1,1]) and V(2)=pi, V(3)=4pi/3 etc. Can we find a general formula for this in terms of just n?\n\nIt turns out that [we can show that](_URL_1_)\n\n* V(2k) = pi^(k)/k!\n\n* V(2k+1) = 2(k!)(4pi)^(k)/(2k+1)!\n\nThe formula for the even-dimension case is really nice, but the dimension for the odd dimensional case is really ugly, and the fact that they are split like this kinda sucks. Is there a better way that we can write this that doesn't distinguish between these cases so that I can just write \"V(n)=...\"? \n\nIf n is even, then I can rewrite the even case as V(n)=pi^(n/2)/(n/2)! and this is okay because n/2 is still an integer. This formula is nice. I want it to work for all cases. Since (n/2)! is not defined when n is odd, I'm free to assign to it whatever number I want. So I'm going to define (n/2)! to be whatever number it needs to be so that V(n)=pi^(n/2)/(n/2)! for *any* n.\n\nThis means that when n is odd, I need\n\n2((n-1)/2)!(4pi)^([n-1]/2)/n! = pi^(n/2)/(n/2)!\n\nThe fact that n is odd means that everything on the left side of this equation is defined. In fact, the only thing that is *not* defined in this equation is (n/2)!, so we can solve for it to see what it has to equal. Doing this gives\n\n(n/2)! = sqrt(pi)n!/(2^(n)((n-1)/2)!)\n\nThis formula for half-integer factorials is made so that V(n)=pi^(n/2)/(n/2)! for all integers n. Plugging in various odd n gives\n\n* (1/2)! = sqrt(pi)/2\n\n* (3/2)! = 3sqrt(pi)/4\n\n* (5/2)! = 15sqrt(pi)/8\n\nObviously, the values of (n/2)! do not tell us how sets of size n/2 can be ordered, because no such sets exist. But the appearance of factorials in the formulas for the volume are connected to orderings of sets, so we're essentially finding a formula for how many ways a set of size n/2 *would* be ordered if it did exist. Generally, anytime you see a factorial, you're counting permutations of sets somehow, for instance [Here's why they are in Taylor Series](_URL_3_). Similarly, whenever you see pi in a formula then you're doing something with circles. Through this method, it's clear why there has to be a pi in the formula for (n/2)!, because we're using the formulas for volumes of sphere to do it!\n\n----------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nThis method of extending the factorials is obviously limited to only half-integer factorials. But it's more naturally motivated than just pasting the expression for the Gamma Function and just saying \"Plug in x=3/2\" and it tells us how pi naturally gets involved. The resulting formula is something that is motivated, and not just handed down from Euler, our Lord and Savior. \n\nBut we *can* use the Gamma Function to extend all of this even further, it gives us a factorial for every complex number except the negative integers. In fact, there is a theorem saying that the Gamma Function is the only way to extend the factorial to the complex plane in a \"nice enough way\". But many of these kinds of results, values of familiar functions at unfamiliar values having unintuitive values, can be done without appealing to modern tools. Our modern tools are super powerful and were developed to find answers to very hard questions, like the [Prime Number Theorem](_URL_0_) or the [Riemann Hypothesis](_URL_2_). They weren't invented to evaluate the factorial function at non-integer values, they just need to be consistent with other, easier methods that do this, but they offer no cool math-tricks or insights. Just plug-and-chug.\n\nI also find it weird that people are okay with the formula (1/2)!=sqrt(pi)/2 and not okay with the formula 1+2+3+4+...=-1/12. To me there's no philosophical difference, both are extending previous notions to where they are undefined by finding some extension relation, yet people get antagonistic about 1+2+3+4+.. and not (1/2)!."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number_theorem",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_of_an_n-ball",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis",
"https://postformalism.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/why-are-there-factorials-in-the-taylor-series/"
]
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du5eqr | Why does food lose some vitamins when baking or frying, compared to steaming or boiling? | [deleted] | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/du5eqr/why_does_food_lose_some_vitamins_when_baking_or/ | {
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"When you expose things to heat, things change in them. You have seen this before--imagine you have a pumpkin. It's pretty hard--if you put it in boiling water for a while, it will get softer, will change color, and will change flavor. This is because when exposed to heat, many of the components change into other chemicals. The same thing happens with the nutritional elements in food--you put them in heat too long, and they break down and are no longer so nutritious.\n\nBoiling is a little worse than other methods, though. You see, much of the nutritional substances can dissolve into the water--when you pour the water out, you pour them out too."
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708u85 | what is happening in the brain when you are not paying attention to someone saying something and you hear what they said inside your head some minutes after they've said it? | This happens usually when I am engrossed with something else and not attentive to what someone said. It echoes in my head some time later and initially it is difficult to perceive that it was said some time before, and feels like it is happening now. Why does this happen? And how does this process work inside the brain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/708u85/eli5_what_is_happening_in_the_brain_when_you_are/ | {
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"There are different levels of consciousness layered on top of each other that make up your reality. Some you are very aware of/in control of, others are kind of like \"auto pilots\" that let you do stuff like drive a car without really thinking about it, or wake up on time even though your alarm didn't go off, or hear someone say your name even though you weren't consciously listening to their conversation.\n\n What I think is happening here, is basically your \"subconscious\" is paying attention even when your \"primary conscious\" is not, and when your conscious mind is no longer focusing on a thing at hand, sometimes your subconscious is nice enough to be like \"hey a thing happened while you weren't paying attention, here it is\". I don't really experience the thing you're talking about, but I get a thing a lot where I will just be looking around not focusing on anything in particular, and all of a sudden word pops up in my head as if I had just read it, although I didn't consciously read it. If I examine my environment again, I often find that word somewhere, and obviously my brain read it extremely quickly while I wasn't even trying to read, then helpfully handed me the information moments later."
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c7zmgx | Why didn't Abrahmic religions gain as much ground in Japan as in Korea did during the 1900s? | Also, why was Buddhism, despite being a foreign religion, gain much more ground in Japan? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c7zmgx/why_didnt_abrahmic_religions_gain_as_much_ground/ | {
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"Short answer: Buddhism was indigenized in Japan by the 1900s, with a history extending back *centuries* and so was only a \"foreign\" religion by a technicality, but not in any practical term. That said, Buddhism in Japanese society had a very *very* high place, oftentimes intertwined with government, politics, and daily ritual. Korean Buddhism, since 1392, by design, was removed from society, and was a political pawn (emphasis on the *pawn* part). When Korea was annexed into the Japanese Empire in 1910, Japanese Buddhism was rich, diverse, and influential. Korean Buddhism was poor, decrepit, and seen as a corrupt and ultimately traitorous organization. Buddhism became more or less discredited in Korean society, and was seen as a backwards and ultra-traditionalist perspective that bore little relation to the modern Capitalist economy, of which Christianity seemed to be a part. In Japan, where Christianity did not accompany the modernity of the Meiji Resoration, it was proved that a nation could be developed, modern, and capitalist without mass conversion to Christianity. \n\nLong answer: There was a similar question asked a few months ago which you can read my answer to [here](_URL_0_)"
]
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ajfgjd/how_come_japan_was_able_to_achieve_high/eexhiq5/"
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4zozmt | What did it really mean to be released from a Gulag? Where would one be "dropped off" after serving their time in a camp? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4zozmt/what_did_it_really_mean_to_be_released_from_a/ | {
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"The gulag was a massive system over a large period of time, so it's difficult to talk about it just as one thing. In fact, it was incredibly variable - that might have been its most defining feature in the end. So let's look at one particularly instructive moment - the 1945 amnesty. There is an absolutely fantastic article on this topic that I will mention at the outset, from which much of the following comes. I'll just throw the citation up here at the beginning so people can go find it if they want:\n\nGolfo Alexopoulos. \"Amnesty 1945: The Revolving Door of Stalin's Gulag.\" *Slavic Review* Vol. 64, No. 2. (Summer 2005), 274-306.\n\nIndeed, the very premise of Alexopoulos article is as follows:\n\n > Stalin's labor camps and colonies formed a dynamic , variable, and unstable system in which a majority of prisoners came and went, and the 1945 amnesty reveals the movement and tension of this revolving door. (275)\n\nSo it is not that the 1945 amnesty was typical, but rather than it was such a massive moment when it came to people departing the Gulag that it reveals that variation and dynamism. \n\nSo, in 1945 you about one million gulag prisoners either released or having their sentences reduced more or less all at once. It was a very controlled and measured process.\n\n\nAlexopoulos explains: \n\n > No only did they *[Officials in the labor camps -TMH]* manage the issuance of passports, provide transportation from the camp or colony to the prisoner's new location, and issue (or not) material goods and food for the journey, but more importantly, Gulag authorities decided the destination of each ex-prisoner. According to the Gulag leadership, the issue of where to settle amnestied prisoners 'had to be approached with care' in order to provide maximum assurance that the former inmates would 'return to an honest life.' (292)\n\nOne specific treatment an inmate received was largely dependent on who they were, what the crime had been, and what the leadership thought was their best chance at avoiding the person returning to a criminal life. Leaving aside for the moment the \"true\" criminality of various things - the Gulag did, after all, hold many political prisoners - there were still many different kinds of people who had to be integrated back into Soviet society. Destinations could include ones family or place or origins in the best case scenario, or communities designed explicitly for the rehabilitation of prisoners that were nonetheless distinct from the Gulag system and where they might be working in heavy industry. Others faced exile that meant they weren't imprisoned, but were neither free to return to many parts of the Soviet Union that were likely more desirable. (293-294) Keep in mind that the freedom of movement throughout the Soviet Union was in many cases highly restricted, so simply being out of the Gulag didn't mean you could go just anywhere even after you arrived at your destination. In some extreme scenarios, prisoners were technically released from their prison term and marked in the system as having served their time, but were nonetheless required by law to continue working the same job they had worked in the labor camp as 'civilian laborers'. \n\nAssuming the best case scenario, you still had to integrate yourself back into the society and economy with a criminal record, which was no easy task. Alexopoulous cites 100s of documents he found in GARF (the largest archive in Russia), of former prisoners appealing to be given a clean record after release to help them integrate back into the economy more easily. Remember that when the economy is state run, that criminal record is going to follow you literally everywhere and a lot of jobs simply won't be available to you.\n\nAlthough the amnesty in 1945 provides us with a major data point, for lack of a better term it actually quite a bit to expose the extent to which the system was incredibly variable. The Gulag wasn't just a place you got thrown in and rotted, although that did happen. People were constantly entering and leaving the system. Still, the experience could be arbitrary. Sentences were extended without warning. The conditions were terrible, and even if and when you did get out, your life wasn't necessarily just going to go back to normal. The high turnover in the Gulag also exposes another feature though - that it permeated Soviet society. With so many people coming and going, many ordinary Soviet people would have had contact with people who had some experience of the Gulag, which meant that it was a very present system in the minds of Soviet people. It wasn't some far away place, but paradoxically close to home despite the often remote locations of the camps. This kind of thinking, thanks in large part to Alexopoulos' article is becoming more the norm in studies of the Gulag. \n\n\n\n\n",
"If I want to learn more about the Gulag system would the \"Gulag Archipelago\" be a reliable and accurate source? Sorry for off topic.^^^modshavemercy"
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449m7b | Did Protestants, after the Reformation, use large-scale violence to convert differing groups in a manner similar to The Crusades? | I don't mean as a part of a whole, let's say in converting Native Americans, unless they had a widespread plan to do so. Because I seem to have read that many types of people came to America from all over Europe with many differing beliefs, or even no beliefs. So instead, I'm wondering if Protestant Christians committed large scale, organized violence in the name of God or Jesus Christ?
Thank you in advance for any help or insights you may have. And although I read both the FAQ and the rules, if I am in error, please forgive me as this is my very first question here. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/449m7b/did_protestants_after_the_reformation_use/ | {
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"A reply to /u/teaandabook \n\nI'm not sure the context of your question. Are you aware of the religious wars in France and Germany, also known as the Thirty Years' War, that saw widespread destruction and violence by all sides of the conflict? Or the Dutch rebellion, known as the Eighty Years' War?"
]
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w26ki | the difference between a thc pill and smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes. | Is THC the only active ingredient in pot that helps? Wouldn't a pill be easier to take?
Do they work differently?
Etc general questions. Mainly the controversy over smoking pot. If you can take it in a pill why would smoking (bad for lungs) be an option?
Sorry this is worded poorly. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/w26ki/eli5_the_difference_between_a_thc_pill_and/ | {
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"There IS a drug on the market (Dronabinol) that contains the main THC in marijuana. However marijuana has a lot more cannabinoids (the class of substances that THC belongs to) and when smoked have a much quicker effect than ingesting a pill.",
"Cannabis contains, among other things; cannabidiol (CBD), cannabinol (CBN), and tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV) (Source: Wikipedia, I was lazy).\n\nThere are many more active ingredients in cannabis over 400 (according to Wikipedia also). The problem with pills is that they like to only put a few ingredients in them. THC is the main drug in cannabis, but the others I listed have a major impact in the effects of smoked or eaten cannabis and all the many others create nuance between different strains of cannabis.\n\nTHC on its own will not give you a high like cannabis, it will give you a high but its not the same.\n\nThe reason many doctors don't like people smoking cannabis as medicine is because of the number of chemicals in it. Scientists test one drug at a time, they might study the interaction between two different drugs but they cant gather conclusive data on the interaction between so many different substances.\n",
"A pill also has to go through the digestive tract, and you lose some of the active ingredient during this process. It's known as the \"first pass effect\". You have to swallow the pill, then it goes to your stomach, blah blah blah, then to your liver where some of it will be metabolized and excreted. \n\nWhen you smoke, you inhale and the particles enter your lungs then go directly into your blood stream. So not only does inhalation deliver a faster onset of the drug, but you also get more of it, since inhalation doesn't have the first pass effect. ",
"Very surprised nobody mentioned that the other cannabinoids in weed are also medicinal. \n\nAlso thc on it's own gives a very unpleasant effect. Tends to trigger anxiety attacks. The reason for this is that there are compoundss in cannabis that make you relaxed and sleepy, and counteract the stimulating, and mildly psychedelic THC."
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4kjx31 | Is it possible to know what color a material will be without actually seeing it? | If so, what details would you need to know? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4kjx31/is_it_possible_to_know_what_color_a_material_will/ | {
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"Yes. Color is determined by the band gap of materials. Band gaps between 3-5 eV correspond to visible light (color). We can roughly calculate these electronic levels for a given material computationally (though imprecisely), but know it easily through experiment. Thus, if you have information on these band gaps, you could determine the color the material will be (since energy corresponds exactly to frequency regardless of media).\n\nMore laymen discussion easily found at _URL_0_",
"Just to add to what u/Funtimepancakehero said.\n\nYou can also have nanomaterial effects that define color. The classic example is looking at a [butterfly's wing](_URL_0_) up close. These very small structures can actually trap in light of certain wavelengths, causing a shift in our perceived color of that material (basically determining what colors can bounce off of it). This is distinct from a substance's color as dictated by it's bandgap. In both cases however, I believe there are theoretical methods for predicting the color of the resulting material. "
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3ai835 | How "French" were the Franks? (plus some bonus questions) | You have several Frankish figures with names like Clovis, founder of the Merovingian Kingdom; Charles aka Charlemagne, founder of the Carolingian Empire; and Louis, son of Charlemagne and King of Aquitaine. And then you have figures with more Germanic names like Childeric, Frankish king and father of Clovis; and sons of Clovis: Chlodomer, Childebert, Chlothar, and Theuderic.
I know that the Franks were a group Germanic tribes that spoke Old Franconian, a Germanic language. In Crusader Kings II terms, the Franks, at some point, "flipped" or changed their culture to French while adopting the French language which was a Gallo-Romance language, thus being more related to Latin.
Right now, I'm tempted to pronounce Clovis, Charles, and Louis as "clo-vee", "sharl", and "loo-ee", even though they were Franks rather than French.
So I reiterate my question: How "French" were the Franks?
For my bonus questions: How "Italian" were the Lombards? How "Dutch" were the Franks or the Frisians? How "Castillian" or "Catalan" were the Visigoths?
Best regards, a Crusader Kings II player.
PS: If this is the wrong subreddit to ask such a question, please point me to the right one. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ai835/how_french_were_the_franks_plus_some_bonus/ | {
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"I can't answer your question because I don't know enough about the time period, but I did want to address your use of names as evidence. Charlemagne was actually called \"Carolus Magnus,\" it was just 'french-ified' to Charlemagne. Germans call him Karl. In the same manner, Louis is called Ludwig by Germans. It isn't really fair to say that they have French names given that they also have German names. ",
"hi! on Charlemagne and the Franks v French, you might get something out of this section of the FAQ\n\n* [Frankish and French](_URL_0_)\n\nif you have followup questions on locked posts, ask them here & include the user's username so they'll get autonotified",
"Well, some never made the switch - there's still a community of Franconian speakers in Lorraine ;). The French territory has always been majority Romance-speaking, even under the Franks, who only made up about 5% of the population of the Carolingian Empire. The commoners spoke one of the Romance-based 700 languages spoken in France. Frankish was still spoken by kings and the aristocracy into the 10th century, and Hugues Capet was the first king who only spoke a Romance dialect. The use of the dialect gradually spread among the aristocracy and became dominant among the ruling class by the 13th century and later evolved into French. (Interestingly enough, the lower classes continued speaking other dialects and only about 1 in 10 French people even spoke or understood French until the late 18th century).\n\nAnd as others have commented, (mostly retroactive) adaptation of the names of important historical figures is really common and not an indicator of national identity - Hugues Capet is known as Hugh Capet in English and Hugo Capetius in Latin, for example.\n\nReferences: _URL_0_",
"Dear fellow CKII player,\n\nHis name wasn't Clovis: his name was better rendered as Chlodovech or, even more precisely, as *Hlōdowig, as /u/dsmid says. Clovis' wife was not named Clotilde: her name was something more like Chrotechildis. You're forgetting that some historical figures are so ancient that their names have undergone latinisation, anglicisation, francisation, germanisation, etc, over the centuries or millenia. That Chlothar fellow you mention? I often see his name written as Clotaire or even Lothar. The name used in a particular text by a particular author in a particular century is insufficient to determine the extent to which the individual himself/herself was either 'Frankish' or 'French'. See [this online resource](_URL_0_) for a slightly more accurate and consistent list of Merovingian names with a handful of alternates.\n\nAs for the extent to which the Franks were French, what you're really asking is \"when did vulgar Latin in Gaul transition into Old French?\". So, naturally, some of the Franks will be quite Germanic, some quite Roman, and some quite French, all depending on the century we're talking about. The earliest written example of Old French to survive to the present day dates to 842 with the Oaths of Strasbourg of Charles the Bald. But the process that began this transition began as early as the 3rd Century. That's all I'll say about it, though.",
"Info provided in the link that /u/Searocksandtrees shared is very helpful here. I'll add some info too, with the bonus questions in mind, since I have knowledge of the Visigoths as well (I am less knowledgeable about the situation in Italy so I'll leave that to someone else)...\n\nThe semantics of the word \"Franks\" is important to answering your question, just as the semantics of the word \"Visigoths\" is important to answering your bonus question. The Franks were, at least at first, a Germanic tribe residing just east of the Rhine (as described [here](_URL_2_) at Encyclopedia Brittanica). In the twilight years of the Western Roman Empire, they were one of many tribes, Germanic and otherwise, to participate in the Great Migrations of the period—huge contingents of Frankish people headed West into what was Roman Gaul, and settled there. At the time, those Frankish people spoke a Germanic language (Frankish). They ultimately displaced the leadership structure in the former Roman province of Gaul and Frankish nobles installed themselves as the ruling elite, with some semblance of Latin blessing due to the fact that the Frankish king Clovis converted to Christianity.\n\nMeanwhile, at (very) roughly the same time, Germanic peoples were settling in the Iberian Peninsula and doing basically the same thing, displacing the Roman power structure. The two dominant powers in the Iberian Peninsula at the time were the [Suebi](_URL_0_) and the [Visigoths](_URL_3_) (who had themselves essentially been driven Westward by the expansionist Franks). The Visigoths swallowed up the Suebi before long and established the Visigothic Kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula. The Visigoth elite spoke Gothic, a Germanic language, and brought Germanic culture into the Iberian Peninsula with them.\n\nBy 600, what we now call France was part of the \"Kingdom of the Franks.\" What we now call Spain and Portugal was part of the \"Kingdom of the Visigoths.\" Here's where semantics come into play. The Kingdom of the Franks (aka Francia), despite being named for the ruling elite, was not just a kingdom of the Frankish ethnic group. Although Clovis and his relatives had taken control of the power structure in the former Roman province of Gaul, they didn't get rid of the people who lived there already, a population of Gallo-Romans who spoke a local form of [Vulgar Latin](_URL_1_), inflected with the Gallic influences of the previous Celtic power structure. The same thing was true in Iberia—the \"Kingdom of the Visigoths,\" though named for the Gothic people in the leadership positions, was made up of Ibero-Romans, who spoke a local form of Vulgar Latin, inflected with the Celtiberian influences of the area.\n\nOver time, most of the Franks and basically the entirety of the Visigoths adopted the local languages and many parts of the local culture, though they maintained many parts of their own cultures as well. In both instances, the legal codes of the respective kingdoms were Germanic in origin (since the ruling elites were themselves Germanic in origin). In terms of language, though, the Germanic influence faded rather quickly—for instance, by the 700s, very few people in the Iberian Peninsula spoke the Germanic Gothic language. The switch was not instantaneous; it was a gradual cultural shift where the initial \"Franks\" and the initial \"Visigoths\" would have seemed very Germanic in language and customs, with their descendants becoming more and more assimilated with the local cultures. In the year 450, the Frankish elite would have spoken an entirely different language from what we now know as French. By the year 900, the ruling elite in the area was speaking the predecessor to modern French. Clovis, whom you mention, was very much a Germanic Frank nobleman. His descendant Charles the Bald would have been culturally much closer to the kings of medieval France (and the modern \"French\") than Clovis ever was.\n\nSo if you are talking about the ethnic group \"the Franks,\" they were very much a Germanic tribe at first, who ultimately assimilated with the already existing Gallo-Roman culture in the area they settled. But if you are talking about the Kingdom of the Franks, it was always a multiethnic society where Germanic Franks held leadership positions over a largely Gallo-Roman populace. So if you were to say \"the Franks fought in the Battle of Tours,\" you would probably be referring to a multiethnic group of soldiers representing the Frankish kingdom. The cultures of this multiethnic nation state would all coalesce to become the \"French\" culture you think of today (in that sense, the \"Franks,\" the Kingdom of the Franks, was the basis for \"French\" culture). On the other hand, the powerful Germanic Franks (the ethnic group) were just one of the ethnic groups in the pot, who became increasingly assimilated with the local culture over time.\n\nThe story was much the same in the Iberian Peninsula in terms of the melting pot of cultures, except that the another major ethno-linguistic group arrived in Spain (the Arab/Berber \"Moors\" of the Umayyad Caliphate) in the 700s and almost completely displaced the Visigoths, except for a small pocket that remained independent of Muslim rule in Northern Spain. That pocket would grow over time and eventually form multiple kingdoms that would expand, mostly southward and westward. Most of those kingdoms would unify under the Crown of Castile, and the Vulgar Latin spoken there would eventually grow into Castilian (Spanish). One of those successor states would stay independent of Castilian hegemony and grow into the Kingdom of Portugal, where the Vulgar Latin evolved into modern Portuguese. \n\nAs a note, the Catalan language grow out of the Vulgar Latin in a different pocket of non-Muslim areas in the Eastern Iberian Peninsula. That area was essentially dominated by Frankish-ruled or Frankish-allied marcher states in the foothills of the Pyrenees that would ultimately gain more and more independence, expand southward, and then unify under the Crown of Aragon, a preeminent power in the Western Mediterranean that would eventually link with the Crown of Castile via the marriage of King Ferdinand (of Aragon) and Queen Isabella (of Castile) to form what we now call Spain. That Frankish influence in the origins of the Crown of Aragon is a big part of why the Catalan language sounds a lot like a mixing bowl of Spanish and French.\n\nAs another note, I said \"most\" of the Franks assimilated with Romano-Gallic culture because the Frankish culture/language remained strong in the northern reaches of the Frankish Empire in the modern day Low Countries, which were variously more or less independent from the centralized authority of the kingdom of France as the Middle Ages progressed, and ultimately the language spoken there would grow into modern Dutch.",
"I've done quite a bit of work reconstructing Germanic names from the earlier parts of those periods, so hopefully I can offer some insight. Clovis is a great name for giving us some idea of when Frankish gave way to Old French among Frankish nobility, and I'm been collecting Gothic names well past the fall of the Visigothic Kingdom.\n\n\nClovis and Louis are the same name. In early Frankish, the name would have looked something like *Hlodo-vech or *Hlodo-wech or *Hlodo-wig. The first element is related to our word 'loud', in this case meaning 'famous' or 'well-known'. The second element is usually taken to mean 'warrior' or 'man'.\n\n\nMost of our documents regarding the various Clovises are in Latin, and tend to render the initial H as Ch, and attach the Latin nominative -us ending. So we get Chlodovechus.\n\n\nOur first document in Old French is from 842, the Oaths of Strasbourg. We see the name rendered in Latin as Lodhuvicus and Lodhuwicus, and in Old French as Lodhuuigs. The -s ending is dropped in the oblique case, so we also have 'contra Lodhuuuig'.\n\n\nI'm not sure when we would start seeing the form Clovis, but it seems that the -s remained from the Old French nominative, while the aspirated -ch- or -g- was dropped. Even later, the initial Ch- is dropped, and we get Louis. \n\n\nCharlemagne would have likely pronounced his own name as Karl, as he spoke a very late dialect of Frankish, and also Latin. In Latin, he would have added the inflectional endings, giving us Carolus in the nominative. Though he was alive before we have records of Old French, we know that the Gallo-Roman population would not have pronounced Charles as we do today, in either English or French. Old French 'ch' was pronounced like more like English's 'cheer' than 'sheer'. The word final 's' would have been pronounced. I don't know when the word initial 'c' would have become 'ch', but it would have happened sometime in the Old French period, either before or after Charlemagne's time. But we can look at the Strasbourg Oaths- and we see Karolus in Latin and Carlus and Karlus in Old French. So I doubt anyone was saying anything other than a straight up voiceless velar stop (k) during his lifetime, except perhaps in some more progressive dialect.\n\n\nI generally think of Charlemagne as the last of the Frankish Franks and the beginning of the French, but that's just me. Charlemagne's children would have been educated in Latin and we have little evidence of Frankish in use in France. I don't think his successors would have used it as much as Latin, and their successors would have used even less (except for the rulers of Eastern Frankia). Frankish names are still recognizably Germanic in origin, but become more and more disguised as they're rendered in Medieval Latin and Old French orthography. Of course, Franks in German speaking areas would have continued to use Frankish, and their dialects would have merged with what we think of as German. Old Dutch is also called Old Low Franconian, and its some of the most substantial records of Frankish that we have.\n\n\nOk, the Visigoths. Members of the Gothic-L list on Yahoo have debated the language of the Visigoths ad infinitum, and they failed to come to a conclusion about how long the Visigoths spoke Gothic, or maintained an ethnic identity separate from the Roman population of Hispania/Western France. If you're interested in this in more depth, check out the 'Goths and Romans' chapter of Hillgarth's The Visigoths in History and Legend. \n\n\nPeter Heather sees the Visigothic kingdom as becoming somewhat ethnically integrated by about 700. We see less and less Roman names and more and more Gothic ones, suggesting that the Hispano-Roman population was taking Gothic names. At the time of the initial settlement, most Visigoths would have been born in or lived most of their lives within the borders of the Roman Empire, so it's likely that they had a decent command of Latin. Gothic would have been in use in the Arian church, so the most significant differences between Goths and Hispano-Romans would have been names and religion. With Hispano-Romans taking Gothic names, only religion would remain. After Reccared abandoned Arianism in 587 and crushed any Arian rebels, the distinction between goth and roman became even thinner, and mostly legal, with the Visigothic laws treating each people as separate classes. We might want to think of goth as meaning 'noble' and roman as meaning 'peasant' in the later Visigothic period.\n\n\nTowards the end of the Visigothic period, Franks begin intermarrying with Visigothic nobility and sometimes it's difficult to tell Gothic names from Frankish ones, especially near the borders. We still see Gothic names in use among the nobility, especially in the Kingdom of the Asturias and Leon, but there are fewer Gothic names on the dynastic lists. Like later Frankish names, they're getting corrupted quite a bit by the 800s or so. The name Fruela or Froila is easily reconstructed as Fraujila. Alfonso would have been something like *Alafuns in Gothic. The queen Adosinda would have been *Audaswintha. Fernando and Ferdinand are variants of *Frithunanths. Those stand out to me, but others leave me scratching my head. Favila looks Gothic, but I have no idea what the first element is. Leonese monarchs start getting names that look weird to me. By weird, I mean not Gothic. \n\n\nI'm less familiar with the Lombards, but you would have seen a similar process of integration, where the Lombards formed an elite that governed the Latin speaking population of the regions where they settled. Over time, as a minority, the adopted the language of the majority they were ruling and the ethnic distinctions faded away. As nobility, their naming conventions stuck, even after their language died out. So we see plenty of Germanic names in use among Italian speakers. Though some regions in northern Italy still speaks dialects of German, and Lombard settlers in those regions probably never lost their Longobardic. Instead, it just converged with what we think of as German, becoming yet another dialect in the German sprachbund, but happening to be within the borders of what is currently Italy. "
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abj0jz | how are broken bones in non-castable areas fixed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/abj0jz/eli5_how_are_broken_bones_in_noncastable_areas/ | {
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"The cast is mostly to prevent further damage. It is not strictly necessary but is more comfortable. It is possible to cast a larger area in order to protect the fracture site from further injury but this will likely be less comfortable then just not putting on a cast. It is mostly the extremities that need extra protection during the healing process as this is where it is easiest to get damaged. So it is not as necessary to protect the core body. So if you for example go the the emergency room with a broken rib there is nothing the doctors can do except make sure there is nothing more serious. After the examinations and x-rays you just get sent home with orders to take it easy. However if the fracture is more serious they can operate and insert rods to join the bone back together again.",
"Well, if you break the neck of the femur, they drill a hole and install a screw bracket through the femur and into the head of the femur to hold it in place while it fuses back together. You can't put weight on that leg for 6-8 weeks. Then you get to learn how to walk again, as the muscles have all atrophied. If all that sounds incredibly painful, it is.",
"Fingers for example are taped or splinted and taped.\n\nPersonal experience more then once.\n\n",
"Many many ways. Depends on the fracture.\n\nThe function of a cast is to stop movement of the bone while it heals. There are other ways to do this if a cast won’t work.\n\nFor example: if the fracture isn’t that bad then the patient might be simply asked to not do ‘x’ movement for ‘x’ amount of time.\n\nOther examples: Slings can be used to minimize movement for collar bone fractures. External fixations which are like cages around the broken bones, can be used for more complicated fractures. Sometimes pins are put in place to keep a bone together while it heals and removed later like with certain finger fractures. \n"
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2m7dap | Why is Cyprus not part of Greece? | I understand Cyprus gained independence some time after Greece did. Most of the Cypriot population is Greek-speaking and is ethnically Greek. Why did it become a separate state? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2m7dap/why_is_cyprus_not_part_of_greece/ | {
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"Greece was under Ottoman control and revolted in the 1830s while Cyprus was under British control and gained independence from them in the 1960s. Cyprus maintained its independence but there were those that wanted it to be apart of Greece, both in Athens and on the island. A Greek sponsored coup in 1974 ousting President Makarios III led to Turkey invading and controlling a third of the island. Now the island is divided between Turkish and Greek halves.\n\nDoes that help?"
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fztgox | why your feet tingle after you almost slip or sometimes when something slips from your hand | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fztgox/eli5_why_your_feet_tingle_after_you_almost_slip/ | {
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"It's a small spike of adrenaline. When you're about to slip or drop something, your adrenal glands start pumping in case you need to respond quickly with power, strength, or heightened reflexes."
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45g6by | most americans i've met are very smart, sensible people who generally seem to have been educated far better than i; how is it that there's such a prevalent cultural stereotype of the dumb american? | Mainly I wonder where this notion stemmed from. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45g6by/eli5_most_americans_ive_met_are_very_smart/ | {
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"In the same vain that \"the squeaky wheel gets the grease\", our dumbest are generally are our loudest. ",
"Think about the context you've met them in. Was it traveling? Was it through work? I highly doubt you've a representative sample of Americans.",
"Same reason that -\n\nAll Germans are either closet nazis or robots\n\nAll French people are cheese eating surrender monkeys\n\nAll English people drink tea and speak Cockney\n\nAll Japanese people are one failure away from seppeku\n\n... on so on.\n\nStereotypes are over simplifications to help people put everyone into their \"box\". America has plenty of really ignorant people... but also more than our share of geniuses.",
"Most stereotypes are portrayed via the media, and lots of the shows that have come out of the US are ones like the Jersey Shore, Kardashians, and basically MTV. \n\nAt the same time, in some regards, the stereotype is true. Americans are actually very bad at subjects like history, geography, reading/writing, and other backgrounds.\n\nSo when it come to the international realm and Americans are placed outside the US the whole 'Americans are Dumb' comes from people not knowing the differences between Paris, France, and Europe.",
"America receives a lot of international attention, and heavily influences the world. Most people have encountered American tourists, and tourist stereotypes aren't positive anywhere. National news agencies often report on local American news stories that are strange, including the sort of thing you find on /r/FloridaMan, while equivalent news stories rarely filter back to America (except perhaps the strange things ascribed to the Chinese).\n\nThe second big factor would be that America has a more domestic focus culturally. It only makes sense--if your international neighbors are an hour's journey away, you have to interact with them more and be more knowledgeable about them. Meanwhile people around the world get to know America through its vast cultural output. The fact that many Americans are less knowledgeable about other countries gives the wrong impression. Of course, if you poll people abroad about the finer points of American geography or politics, they will probably not succeed either, but they're familiar with the broad strokes because America is so large and influential.",
"I'd point to a few things when you're thinking about this:\n\n1. Americans travel A LOT. You'll meet a lot of americans pretty much anywhere in europe that you live. You'll see them. No one is more dumb than a person who is traveling. They get uncomfortable and they start talking about what they have back home that doesn't exist in the place they are traveling. Only the most seasoned and sophisticated travelers escape the \"defend your home\" talk that people have when you travel. Since americans have often been the ones traveling, so it goes that they have this reputation.\n\n2. It's been hard for Americans to cross major cultural lines. Experiencing other cultures is easy for a spaniard - you drive less than the distance from my house to the next STATE to get to an entirely different culture. This means that we're often having a new experience being out of our cultural comfort zone. In this regard americans genuinely are more ignorant, at least they often are.\n\n3. Power. People talk about America because of its significant. Talk alot + being \"the other\" will often have some dimention of \"stupid\". This is a bit like how we always make fun of the famous, or the president or whatever. Because we can do so without a sense of pity!\n\n4. Media. If you'd spent your entire life seeing american media products and that formed your sense of american culture you'd probably think we were dumb too!",
"Assuming you're a pretty typical European, you're mostly going to be running into Americans whose careers or personal tastes are leading them to travel around the world. These people are going to be unusually well-educated by anyone's standards, they'll most likely be better educated than a typical European, and if *you're* typical they'll seem very well-educated to you.\n\nThe \"dumb American\" stereotype primarily comes from the period of roughly 1880-1980, when growing American wealth created a social mismatch where an American who was of relatively low socioeconomic status compared to other Americans would be wealthier than Europeans of a much higher socioeconomic status. This played out at all levels of the social pyramid, from American industrialists marrying into the British aristocracy, to middle class Americans going on tourist trips that would only be affordable to upper class Europeans, to backwoods GIs socializing with the European middle class. By 1990 or so European incomes had mostly caught up and the mismatch ended.\n\nThere's a lot more to say than that, of course... but this ELI5 so I'll leave it at the explanation of 90% of the phenomenon. If I kept going, would I ever stop?",
"One think I think is unique or uncommon to the United States is that we are far more frank and forthright than others. We are raised to say what we mean and mean what we say, we are taught that it's OK to say 'I don't know,' and so we do. (Canadian comedian Russell Peters has a great bit about people making up directions to places when they didn't know during a trip he took to the Middle East, for comparison.)\n\nSo we take that value when we go abroad, because wherever we go, there we are. We're far more likely to admit ignorance, so the 'ignorant' label sticks. "
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cf89tq | how the hell do deep fakes work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cf89tq/eli5_how_the_hell_do_deep_fakes_work/ | {
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"Without going into the details of that actual technology - Computers have advanced to the point where we can create very realistic looking images using existing material. That has extended to speech as well, so for someone who is particularly well covered (like a politician) it isn't particularly surprising that a computer can create an image of them saying basically anything.",
"You take a picture of person A and you put it in a photo of person B. If you do this naively, just by copying the pixels, the image is discontinuous at the seam. This makes the fake obvious. So, to make a better fake you use a machine learning program to reprocess the pixels near the seam, to make the seam invisible. One such program, as far back as 1997, was called Video Rewrite. The most popular \"brand\" of these better fakes is called \"deep fake\", so named because or a reddit user names \"deepfakes\" who produced and distributed some high quality examples.",
"Honestly, I know it's probably against the rules of ELI5, but I would recommend Corridor's Crew video on their Keanu Reeves deepfake to fully understand everything that's behind this.\n\nIn short, you basically have to get an actor to play the body of the subject of deepfake, and train an algorithm to match the face of that celebrity you want in the scene to the body of the duble, you need to track the face of the celebrity trough interviews and movies though",
"Get lots and lots of pictures from different angles of someone, get some fancy AI that stitches those pictures onto the video depending on the angle of the face replacing it with the ones in the picture.",
"How Deep Fakes are generated is a system of machine learning called \"Generative Adversarial Networking\". It's a system which involves two networks that play a sort of \"information game\" against each other with a \"generator\" network and a \"discriminator\" network. The Generator Network is the one that maps out data patterns drawing from an information source (like drawing from a bunch of pictures of human faces and mapping the data to assemble a realistic human face of a person who does not exist) while the Discriminator network looks at the newly assembled data and attempts to figure out what it does right and wrong against the information source. It grades the Generator's attempt against the source and sends it back with new recommendations for it to incorporate into its next generative attempt. The Discriminator learns what a bad picture looks like and learns how to spot differences in order to offer better critique to the next generative attempt. The cycle continues until the discriminator network makes a certain percentage of error that it believes that the data is genuine and uniform (in other words, when the Generator \"fools\" the Discriminator enough to make it believe what it is seeing is a real image of a real person)",
"The algorithm takes an image of face(with added algorithm to identify face in question), and transforms it into some bit string basically(it's not quite that but it's close enough and I can't think of a way to explain the proper way easily. It's close enough anyway). The model is trained so that it builds this bit string representation and then undoes it. Like, you get face, turn it into bit string, and then try to build face from that bit string again.\n\nTo give an idea of how this training works, you basically score this result, and then change the algorithm so that it scores a little bit better next time. Which in this case is simple, because you just check if the result looks the same as the original image of the face. You can for example count how many pixels are the same.\n\nSo far so good. But now, we split this algorithm into three parts. First, the part A that takes face, and turns it into a bit string. This is called encoder. Next one that takes bit string and turns it back into face is called decoder. We use two separate decoders. Say you want to change face of Keanu into face of Nicholas Cage. You use one decoder, B, for Keanu, and decoder C for Nicholas. \n\nWe train it by taking A + B and feed it images of Keanu. We score results and tweak both A and B. We also use A + C and feed it images of Nicholas and tweak both A and C. As a result, A becomes capable of taking either Nicholas or Keanu face, and turn it into a bit string. B then is able to take that bit string and turn the bit string into Keanu face, and C would take that bit string and turn it into Nicholas face.\n\nSo now we take image of Keanu, and feed it to encoder A to get a bit string, and then use decoder C to turn that bit string into a face of Nicholas Cage.\n\nThis alone doesn't quite work that well, but we can use some mathematical trickery during training to force A to ignore all traits of faces it can see, if it can trust B or C can fill in the blanks. This works by adding extra scoring term during training, which gets kinda complicated, but the gist of it is simple, we want to make A not give B or C details of the face it sees that they should know just because they know the face belongs to Keanu(or Nicholas in case of C). Like, A shouldn't tell B how big a nose the face has, B should already know how big a nose Keanu has. What is the eye color of Nicholas? That's not information bit string should contain, because C learns that just by knowing who Nicholas Cage is.\n\nWith that, you get bit string that contains only things like, which way face is facing, what's the facial expression, where are they looking, etc, and B and C paint their own actors based on these details. So that makes it possible to get this algorithm take one face and replace it with another with pretty much the same position, orientation, expression etc."
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11lz0j | why do people say we aren't recovering from the recession? | I know that the DOW isn't the only marker for how the economy is performing, but isn't it a strong indicator? This is a chart of the stock market over the last 5 years.
_URL_0_; | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11lz0j/eli5_why_do_people_say_we_arent_recovering_from/ | {
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"There are still no jobs. The health of the stock market means absolutely nothing to people who have no jobs.",
"I don't think anybody says the economy *isn't recovering.* At least, I don't think anybody *seriously* says that.\n\nWhat some people say is that the economy isn't recovering *as fast as it could.* Everybody agrees that the economy is gradually climbing back out of the hole it dug for itself in the mid-late 2000s, but not everybody agrees that that recovering is going well, or that it's being brought about in the right way."
]
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| [
"http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5Edji+interactive#symbol=%5Edji;range=5y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined"
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1uevra | Is the reach of gravity infinite? | I was told that everything attracts everything else and that though gravity drops off exponentially with distance the connection between objects is still there. Does this mean that, in a universe that was not expanding and had nothing in it aside from two hydrogen atoms many millions of light years apart, that given enough time they will eventually collide?
Secondary: if so how is this possible? i've heard that gravity might be the result of as-yet-undiscovered particles being exchanged that draws masses toward each other. how would this work? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1uevra/is_the_reach_of_gravity_infinite/ | {
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"I just wanted to drop by with some numbers. If you had an empty and infinite universe and placed two hydrogen atoms one million light years apart, a nonrelativistic calculation says that they will collide in 7*10^43 years. That's a 7 followed by 43 zeroes. To give some perspective, the accepted age of the universe is around 10^10 years. That's 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001% of our number.\n\nIf instead of hydrogen atoms you put two people, the time would go down to about 7*10^29 years. Now it's just 100000000000000000000 times the age of the universe.\n\nNote: the nonrelativistic approximation breaks down when the distance between the atoms is about 1% of the original 1 million light years, but the bulk of the time is spent going slow so it shouldn't matter a whole lot."
]
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viinf | A question about optics.... | Today me and my dad were at Walmart, inside this Walmart was fluorescent lighting and a girl in a very dainty skirt. My dad put on his polarized sunglasses clip for his glasses and suddenly he looked at the girl and behold! He could see her thong through the skirt. He took his clip off and he couldn't see through it any longer, could someone explain what happened here without putting their mind in the gutter? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/viinf/a_question_about_optics/ | {
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"If this indeed happened then the only reasonable explanation I can think of is that it was a semi-transparent skirt to begin with and looked more opaque due to [ polarized specular reflections. ](_URL_0_) When his glasses partially filtered out the reflected light, the skirt appeared more transparent. Or he was messing with you."
]
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| []
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"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization_\\(waves\\)#section_2"
]
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|
|
4z9jyg | Why are significant figures so stressed in chemistry, yet unimportant in physics? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4z9jyg/why_are_significant_figures_so_stressed_in/ | {
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"I'm not sure where you've heard that significant figures are not important in physics, but that's absolutely not true. Significant figures are important in every field of science that works with measurements and experimental data.\n\nMany mathematical operations cause the outcome to have more digits than the inputs. If you give the unmodified outcome, you make it appear as though your outcome is more precise than it actually is.\n\nFor example, if you measure a distance of 52 meters and a time of 17 seconds, you can calculate the velocity and end up with 3.0588235... (etc...) meters per second. If you then state that the outcome of the experiment is a velocity of 3.0588235 m/s, you're making it appear as though your experiment was extremely accurate, while in reality you only measured distance and time to 2 significant figures.\n\nIn reality, the distance might've been close to 52.38271 meters and the time closer to 16.6891 seconds, but the limited accuracy of your measurement system is unable to catch that level of detail.\n\nSo in order to accurately represent the precision of your measurements, you should give the final outcome with just 2 significant figures (when dividing, use the lowest number of significant figures of the two input values, which is 2 in this case as both numbers have 2 significant figures). And that's 3.1 m/s.\n\nIt doesn't really matter which field of science you're in, you can't \"gain accuracy\" by taking measurements with limited precision and applying mathematical operations to them. Therefore, you should be aware of the precision of your original measurements and what that means for the precision of your final answer."
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15x5mz | my co-pay is $20, but without insurance it's thousands of dollars. how does the insurance company make any money? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15x5mz/eli5_my_copay_is_20_but_without_insurance_its/ | {
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"In part, because the insurance company doesn't actually pay that \"uninsured rate\": because they are a huge customer, they negotiate much better rates for the drugs/services. You will never see what they pay: they get an invoice for the face amount, and then get a discount off that.\n\nIt's somewhat the same for car dealers. There's an \"invoice\" with a price, but they don't actually pay that price. The manufacturer gives them all kinds of discounts and credits based on complex rules, like if they meet an overall sales goal they get an extra 5% off.\n\n",
"Actuary here. In general, it's simply because certain risks (health being one of them) are diversifiable in aggregated quantities. As you aggregate individuals, the general health (and thus health care utilization) of the population tends to approach the mean of the popuation (i.e. the variance tends toward zero). Not all risks do this naturally. For example, interest rate risk is not really diversifiable (although there are some modern financial instruments that attempt to hedge interest risk), because no matter how large of a fund you aggregate, you earn the same interest on all the cash. The same isn't true of things like expected future lifetime or expected health care utilization.\n\nThat said, other factors come into play such as network discounts (which really affect the premium side about equally as the claims side, so it is somewhat arbitrary (i.e. insurers price different regions differently due to the discounts, so it is passed on to consumers)). Rate setting is based on historical data and trends, so all that is accounted for in the rate setting based on your demographics, which are priced in order to turn a profit on aggregate pools of risk.\n\nBut the basic reason it works is simply that large groups of people can have health risk diversified in the population and tend toward some average that makes sense."
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5bfkym | why do we sweat and tear up when we vomit? | Unfortunately experienced this moments ago and my interest was piqued. Why do we tear up and sweat when we vomit? Also where does the fatigue come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bfkym/eli5_why_do_we_sweat_and_tear_up_when_we_vomit/ | {
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"When you vomit you are emptying your stomach. It is surrounded by large and strong muscle fibers that are responsible for \"chewing\" the food using your stomach walls as \"teeth\". Vomiting implies those muscle fibers to suddenly contract: the food goes up and exits using your mouth. Also, there is a lot of blood going in and out near your stomach. This process is similar to a sprint run: if you run for ten seconds at full throttle you will end very tired. ",
"It is a result of activation of multiple branches of what is known as the \"autonomic nervous system.\" This is a system of the brain and spinal cord that activates a swath of reflexes often centered around getting you out of threatening situations. I can't comment on the purpose of sweating / heart rate changes, but to comment on the mechanism I would relate it to \"dialing 911\" for the body. A lot of different reasons to mobilize body result in the same non-specific responses. I can go into more detail, but when you get down to the brass tacks of the brain circuit mechanism, it's not understood."
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10q6c5 | What has to happen to grapes(or any fruit for that matter) for them to become seedless? | I'll ask the same thing about oranges and apples, what happens to the seeds? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10q6c5/what_has_to_happen_to_grapesor_any_fruit_for_that/ | {
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"I'm a horticulturist that specializes in food, but I'm only on my phone and many of my sources are books that I have. However, I hope someone can help me verify what I'm about to talk about and tell me if I have something wrong. \n\nThe answer to your question is pretty long though, although a short form would be, \"It varies.\" \n\nThere are many ways seedless fruits are produced, and I'd like to start with talking about what a seed is and how it affects the fruit. A seed is a a method of sexual reproduction, which means that male and female gametes, each with half of the genetic data of their parents, fuse together to create a new organism. It is a way for plants to exchange genetic material to create new combinations of genes that hopefully have a better chance of surviving to maturity and reproducing. For this reason, there are often many consequences to disrupting the seed production, with the most common being fruit abortion, because most plants' final goal is to produce a seed. For example, seedless watermelons are always personal sized for a reason, and it's because the production of the seed triggers the synthesis of gibberelins, which are a class of plant hormone associated with many plant physiology, including the elongation and dormancy of plants. In some cases, plants can also be treated with gibberelins to induce fruit formation and seed abortion, which is how some seedless fruits are made. However, the disruption of seed formation can be a result of human manipulation or mother nature, and in some cases, the seed is simply aborted as a mutation, which would have been the end of the road for most plants. However, someone was fortunate enough to have noticed this and propagate the plant vegetatively to retain the genetic traits. \n\nIn some cases, like bananas, the seeds are sterile due to genetic incompatability. I mentioned earlier that gametes carry half of the genetic material of the parents. However, in some cases, plants can gain extra sets of genetic data, and as a result, one gamete might have some extra DNA, then the two gametes cannot fuse because they need to have the same amount of genetic data to match up and fuse. The explanation for this occurence has to do with ploidy number and meiosis, which I'm sure a wiki article or someone else can explain in better way than me. \n\nThere are other types too, and I'll continue to add more information as I peruse through my hort books. ",
"In general, female plants or the female limbs of hermaphroditic plants produce fruit. To produce seedless fruits you ensure that they are not fertilized by male pollen."
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1dy9fm | Why is the Byzantine Empire purple? | Video games? Purple.
_URL_1_
Historical maps? Purple.
_URL_2_
Contrasts to the the Western Roman Empire? Purple.
_URL_0_
Why is the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire so frequently associated with purple/purpleish hues? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dy9fm/why_is_the_byzantine_empire_purple/ | {
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"The real question, in my eyes, is \"Why did the Romans like purple so much?\"\n\nJust ctrl+F this article for \"purple\"\n_URL_0_\n\nPurple had a \"regal\" [sic] context to it even in times of the republic. The Byzantines piggybacked on that to some degree. Everyone likes to relive the \"former glory\" of Rome, such as the Axis of WWII adopting the Roman military salute and the \"Third Reich\" moniker.\n\nWhy? Because it was expensive. Purple is darker than other colors, and looks cheap if it is not dark. As such, it's tough to make a good puple dye. Because of that, it was rare. Like gold, purple dye is valued because of its rarity. Because it was valued, it was used as a status symbol.\n\nEdit: See also- this article on expensive purple dye.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n\"The production of Tyrian purple was tightly controlled in Byzantium and was subsidized by the imperial court, which restricted its use for the colouring of imperial silks,[2] so that a child born to a reigning emperor was porphyrogenitos, \"born in the purple\", although this term may also refer to the fact that the imperial birthing apartment was walled in the purple-red rock known as porphyry.\"\n",
"Purple, specifically Tyrian purple, was considered the color of nobles and kings long before the Byzantines, probably because it was very expensive and hard to manufacture. Since the Byzantine empire was claiming to the continuation of the Roman empire, they used the same color scheme as well.",
"Purple was a very expensive dye to get a hold of. Roman senators worsee a purple stripe on their togas as a symbol of being rich and powerful. When Rome got an emperor, he wore purple. \"The purple\" became a phrase referring to something imperial. During the dominate period after the crisis of the 3rd century, the power of the emperor became more absolute than it had been before. In the eastern empire which survived the fall of the west, the emperor was an absolute monarch, with power even over the Eastern Orthodox Church (Caesaropapism). So, purple eventually came to symbolize the Roman empire in the medieval period, which we now call the Byzantine empire.",
"One thing no-one has mentioned is that Byzantine Emperors were not just selected on the basis of royal blood; a true Byzantine Emperor had to have been \"born in the purple\" - this was a special bedroom in the Imperial Palace at Constantinople that was reserved specifically for the occasion of a royal birth. And, of course, it was covered in purple drapery. "
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"https://lh3.ggpht.com/-PqrtXbIVx7w/UK-yv-yKVDI/AAAAAAAABes/GtpJ7qNrWyc/s1600/cv-0.53.png",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Justinian555AD.png"
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2p0xbt | how can there be updates on disc games? | Like, it's a physical disc. How do they make updates and apply them to the games? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p0xbt/eli5_how_can_there_be_updates_on_disc_games/ | {
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"They store the updates on the hard drive. All files have to be loaded into RAM before they're used anyway. When the game goes to load a file, it checks the hard drive to see if there's an updated version. It doesn't actually update the disk."
]
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10onro | Were any of the U.S. founding fathers alive during The American Civil War? If so what did they think about it? Or did they speak/write publicly about it at all? | I realize not many, if any, of them were left, since it had been almost 100 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but I imagine there had to be at least a few.
Were there any prominent anti Federalists left? What did they think about the civil war? Were there any that spoke up that were not doing it in interest of the slave trade? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10onro/were_any_of_the_us_founding_fathers_alive_during/ | {
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"None were alive. By greatly stretching the definition of founding father, you can get to 1848 with JQA. But Generally Madison, Marshall and one other guy who can't recall at the moment are considered the last living founders, and they died well before the start of the war.\n\nEdit: Of course Madison was alive to see the Nullification Crisis, and the rise of sectionalism he spoke on both of these points multiple times. Judging by comments I am nearly 100% sure he would have looked at the Civil War with abject horror. ",
"The Founding generation, not just the father's, were almost if not completely gone by the time of the Civil War. In fact, some historians have argued (correctly, I believe) that the Civil War was largely a product of the subsequent generation attempting to protect the legacy of the Revolution in the way they thought best. With no one around anymore to say how it actually was, the next generation was forced to begin interpreting the Constitution and the intentions of the Founders. Much of Northern and Southern sectionalism stems from different interpretations of the American mentality and how the Constitution related to it.\n\nIf anyone has access online to journals through JSTOR or similar, feel free to check out Michael Morrison. “American Reaction to European Revolutions, 1848–1852: Sectionalism, Memory, and the Revolutionary Heritage,” *Civil War History* Vol. 49, Issue 2 (June 2003), as it's a great article on the subject."
]
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2thm3o | why do polar bears live at the northern pole and penguins at the southern? | Is it to do to breeding? Weather patterns? Nature? With this in mind, would Polar bears survive in Antartica? Would Penguins at the North Pole? What really is keeping them from swapping places other than being at separate sides of the planet?
Sorry if a repost, I only have my phone and can't really search too well. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2thm3o/eli5_why_do_polar_bears_live_at_the_northern_pole/ | {
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"I'd assume they could survive in either places. But neither animal would travel the length of the globe without human assistance. And they exist in those places for the same reasons that gorillas live in Africa and kangaroos live in Australia. They evolved there, they're specially adapted to that particular environment and have had no reason to migrate to other places of the world ",
"Bears swim, but primarily prefer land- they basically 'came up' from relatively close places like Russia or Canada. Penguins rook on land but have a really impressive swimming range. And they'd kind of *have* to, given how far away even the closest (and, sfaik, all bear free) land to Antarctica is.\n\nThe niche penguins would have at the North Pole is filled by the Puffin. I have heard of early researchers trying to transplant Emperor penguins to the North Pole, but it's not a very happy story. \n\n(The transplanters didn't take into account exactly how many penguins it takes to make up the 'mass huddle' that penguins do against extreme cold. And ISTR at least one wandered up to the home of someone who didn't know what a penguin was and killed it in a panic).\n\nGiven how dangerous polar bears can be (thus hard to transport) and how screwed the fauna of Antarctica would be if they took off, I couldn't see anyone trying a transplant.",
"* why are polar bears only in the north pole - if I had to guess, I'd say because millions of years ago, a normal bear (generally speaking) was able to get further and further north because there's more ice between the north pole and the nearest land (Russia and Canada). There's no ice, as far as I know, between the southern most land in South America and Antarctica.\n* why are there penguins only in the south pole - again guessing, but I'd say because millions of years ago they were able to fly there. They went further south and found somewhere (Antarctica) they could land. There would have been nowhere similar for them to land year-round in the north (as the ice melts). Once they landed, they settled, then evolved to swim instead of fly.\n* I think polar bears would be able to survive along the coasts of Antarctica. They're certainly adapted to the cold. Their main food is seals, of which there are plenty (they feed on the penguins). The problem is (and this is also a problem for penguins going north): it's not their natural habitat. They could devastate the ecosystem. Polar bears would find an easy meal in penguins (being slow/clumsy on land, and not able to get away in water either since polar bears are great swimmers). In turn that would cause the seal population to decline, and so on.\n* I don't think penguins would thrive at the north pole. There's no land there year round, just ice. There are many predators along the northern land masses that would feed on them and their eggs that aren't present in Antarctica.\n* being on separate sides of the planet is a good enough reason. Only birds, humans and large sea creatures travel those kinds of distances regularly, and humans only do it because technology enables us to. A few hundred years ago, most humans never traveled further than 20 miles from where they were born.",
"Penguins live in the southern hemisphere, not south pole. A few live in Antarctica, but theres Penguins in Australia that Don't live in polar environments at all. Sydney is more tropical and has penguins. "
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fqkrm6 | what are they doing in those numbered free mason lodges? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fqkrm6/eli5_what_are_they_doing_in_those_numbered_free/ | {
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"Networking, it's mostly small business owners being part of a fraternity. They help each other out and also do a lot of charity work. They are secretive, but that's just part of being a brotherhood. There is nothing sinister about Masonic Lodges.",
"Freemasonry is an ancient system of teaching morality. The numbers on our lodges refer to the order in which the lodge was opened in their country. What we do is recite different moral allegories that we have spent all month (or all year sometimes) memorizing, for the dual purposes of; teaching each other (and ourselves) a strict moral code for living life in a way that has a positive impact on the world around us and ourselves; and keeping these ancient words and lessons alive.\n\nIf you know a mason (I'm sure you do) I hope you have a positive view of him as a man, and if you want to be a mason, simply ask a mason.\n\nWe are not scary. We are not elitist. We are the quiet, unassuming men in your community with have a strong view of community and charity. We might be plumbers or doctors, construction workers or bankers, and we only want to make good men better.",
"r/Freemasonry knows better. You might want to ask them."
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6pks7y | king solomon and his temple | I've never been able to find anything online that states exactly what was reported to be under his temple, who he was and what he did.
All religious debate aside, why are people still fixated on a conspiracy theory? What exactly is that theory? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6pks7y/eli5_king_solomon_and_his_temple/ | {
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"According to the Bible, Solomon was the son of King David, and the third ruler of the Kingdom of Israel. He is supposed to have been the one who commissioned the construction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, which became the place of worship for what is now the Jewish religion. In the year 586 BCE, the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonian empire. Later on, a second Temple was built on the same spot (the spot currently occupied by the Dome of the Rock), which was renovated by King Herod, and then destroyed during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. As an aside, both Temples were destroyed on the same date of the Hebrew calendar, which is coming up next Tuesday. Anyway, a lot of the conspiracy theories surrounding Solomon's Temple have to do with two groups. First, the Knights Templar, who, during the Crusades, set up their base on the site of the Temple. They went on to be the subject of approximately a metric fuckton of rumors, legends, and theories, including what they may have found on the Temple Mount. The second group is the Freemasons. Masons trace their traditions back to the artisans employed by Solomon to build the Temple, and they are very popular targets for conspiracy theories. To further complicate things, there is very little in the way of written extra-bibilical records of the time period in which Solomon would have lived (not to mention the fact that archaeologists are not in agreement as to when exactly that time period was) *and* the fact that the site of the two Temples is unavailable for excavation, and so much of the archaeological record has already been destroyed during construction and repair work on the two Muslim holy sites currently located there."
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e5khlo | I have heard plenty of times that the communist system in the Soviet Union is not what Karl Marx intended. | How far away was the communism in the Soviet Union actually from what Marx actually described as communism and what were the main differences? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/e5khlo/i_have_heard_plenty_of_times_that_the_communist/ | {
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"It was quite far away, for a multitude of reasons. There are many different factors, but this is a very broad summary of why the Soviet Union was never “real” communism.\n\nFirst off, the communism Marx intended for was mainly for advanced industrialized western European countries such as England, France, Germany. This is because the more advanced and industrialized the country, the more distinct class distinction was, with more worker manipulation taking place by the owners of the means of production. This is because with industrialization, the need for a lot of workers decreases, so there was more and more competition for the jobs remaining. This leads to worsening conditions and wages because the workers fighting for jobs left are willing to work for cheaper and longer because they’ll do anything really just to have a job. Marx thought that as this progressed, the workers, or the proletariat, could reach a class consciousness of what was going on and could take the means of production from the bourgeoisie (ruling class) in a revolution. Marx thought that the conditions of the workers in relation to the owners would be so bad that they would reach class consciousness inevitably, and all it would take is for someone like Marx himself to point out the worker manipulation taking place. \n\nWhat Marx envisioned happening was that once the workers took the means of production, there would be a TEMPORARY socialist government which helped the transition to a communist society. Engels created the term “withering of the state”, which was Marx’s idea of socialism in which the temporary socialist government would slowly wither away as the workers would eventually be able to self govern without the need for a state, which would lead to a communist society. Essentially, a communist society would have 0 government or state, with the people collectively owning the means of production to produce the needs of the society. Each person would contribute what they can in terms of work and skills, but ultimately be free to hunt, fish, write, partake in the arts, as they please, without anyone in particular owning any private property, because private property is what leads to state formation, capitalistic society, manipulation of workers, etc. To get rid of private property, there has to be means of production available where any need by the people such as food and shelter can be met collectively.\n\nBut, eastern Europe and its regimes were nowhere close to being an advanced industrialized society, and class divisions were nowhere nearly as prominent. The means of production were quite weak due to the lack of industrialization. Most of the USSR (Tsarist Russia before) was essentially peasants, with a very small ruling class, but not to the degree as western Europe. So, Lenin, inspired by Marx, decided that an elite revolutionary class must bring revolution to the region despite the lack of industrialization, along with class consciousness not being reached by the working class, because the working class itself was not as clear as it was in more advanced countries. His justification for speeding up the process and bringing revolution to a place in Marx’s eyes not ready was because he believed there was no time to wait for industrialization, and that basically it would take too long. Many argue his primary motivation was mainly egotistical, and his opportunistic attitude altered what Marx was after. So, when the bolsheviks took over and the previous Tsar left, the ideally socialist transitionary government took power, but because of unclear class divisions, there was a lot of different groups aiming for power. Along with that, World war 1 was going on at the time with Russia fighting both other countries and internal fighting between the previous regime and the many different factions within Tsarist Russia, such as the Bolsheviks, which essentially destroyed the countries economy. When the Bolshevicks and Lenin took power, the country was in such shambles that it was very evident they weren’t even close to being able to self govern because of the lack of means of production of food, etc. Once Lenin died, Stalin took over the party, and the civil unrest of starvation and poor living conditions led to both the strengthening of Stalin’s regime, along with the millions of deaths as a result of the totalitarianism and need to maintain power. \n\nSo, to sum up your question, the brutal dictatorship that arose in the Soviet Union was completely different then Marx’s communism because in Marx’s vision a communist society had no government. The socialism described by Marx and Engles was meant to be very temporary and help ease the transition post revolution to a self governing society, but in the soviet union that transition phase never withered away and the political party in power stayed in power. Essentially, the USSR never reached communism, and no country ever has reached communism. Every country gets stuck when opportunistic people or political parties take power post revolution and never leave. Yet, many modern day marxists say that because the Soviet Union, or any “communist” country was not and hasn’t yet reached the “end stage” capitalism, had very little clear cut class divisions, and essentially no wide spread working population had real class consciousness about their manipulation by the ruling class, that it may still be possible for a communist society to form. They claim that as capitalism continues to advance in today’s society, with the wealth gap between the owners of the means of production and the working class continuing to rise, wages continually lowering, and competition within the working class rising to the tipping point that a revolution of the working class will be inevitable, as Marx predicted. But, a counter argument to modern day Marxism would be that capitalism always seems to find a way to adapt, and things like union formation, universal basic income, are all adaptations to keep workers from reaching any form of unified class consciousness. A good argument regarding modern day marxism could be whether or not this adaptation has an end point. And of course, one can easily play the human nature card if they wanted to, as a strong argument can be made that humans may very well be incapable of such an endeavor even in proper conditions, because we simply are too dangerous to self govern. Many argue power to be extremely easily corrupt-able, so any attempt at communism will fall short due to the difficulty of the transition state ever actually withering away as Marx and Engels had idealized."
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1qm5o1 | with all of our technological advancements, why haven't we been able to recover the titanic yet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qm5o1/with_all_of_our_technological_advancements_why/ | {
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"It is possible, but to what ends and who would finance it. It would be outrageously expensive and they would be bringing up nothing but nearly rotten metal. But it can be done, check this [link](_URL_0_)\n*edit for spelling",
"Its expensive, and people arent willing to spend that much money to recover a rusted hulk that big. besides whats the point?",
"It's an enormous engineering feat which, while possible, would be very expensive. Also, there are many moral/legal objections owing to the wreckage being considered a mass gravesite (though I doube they'd have the abilitiy to actually stop an ernest effort). Additionally, keep in mind that the Titanic is not in perfect shape down there, so you're not going to raise it in one go. It's not structurally stable. \n\nThat said, they have raised parts of it, and scavenged many, many artifacts from it. "
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57mzju | is it possible to convert ocean (salt) water into drinking water? or is there some inherent property preventing this? | I was reading a-lot lately about the droughts in California and the predicted droughts to happen across the globe and wondered why we haven't figured out how to make salt water drinkable... Is it simply a lack of efficient processes? Funding? or some other factor? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57mzju/eli5is_it_possible_to_convert_ocean_salt_water/ | {
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"Generally, the basic concept is evaporating the water (which leaves the salt behind) and re-condensing it into purified water. The big drawback is that this takes a lot of energy, so it usually makes it more expensive than finding existing sources of freshwater.",
"Yes it is possible. The inherent property that makes it difficult is salt. \n\nThere are two basic ways to convert it. \n\n1) Distill the water by boiling it and catching the steam. This takes a massive amount of energy and cannot really be done at a high enough volume to supply a community with water. \n\n2) Filter water. The filter plants are complex and hard to build so they are cost prohibitive, take years to build, and they do take a fair bit of energy to run, but several plants can provide water for a town or even a small city. Those however are not likely to be able to afford to pay for its construction or operation and the technology is not sufficient to provide for large cities yet. \n\nThe US, Australia, and a few other countries are putting significant effort in developing better technology that is cheaper and can filter higher volumes but that tech is years or decades out. "
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1ew8p9 | Has there ever been an event similar to the Arab spring? | I'm not really talking simply about the actions of the people. After all civil wars happen all the time, and revolutions are fairly common through history. I'm talking more about the mentality and goals of the people coupled with their actions. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ew8p9/has_there_ever_been_an_event_similar_to_the_arab/ | {
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"The term 'Arab Spring' in itself is a call back to the 1848 Springtime of Nations, when a wave of revolutions beginning in France spread across all of Europe. Unfortunately I can't give you any information beyond that and so this is quite a poor answer, but if you're interested you should look into 1848.",
"Yes. One of the best examples of such a thing was the [European Revolutions of 1848](_URL_1_). This was a period of numerous revolutions which sprouted from nationalistic sentiment and agitation.\n\nIt largely spawned from the rapidly changing nature of society in the 1800s. Industrialisation was changing the role of the working class from n agrarian to manufacturing society, particularly in western European cities. This resulted in greater social collections of people within manufacturing districts. Technological advances that happened along side this promoted a popular press amongst the working masses, and allowed them to become increasingly politically aware. As Benedict Anderson (briefly) mentions in his work 'Imagined Communities', this happened at a time when socialist and nationalist goals were becoming far more prevalent, and being exchanged amongst the masses.\n\nIt has been argued (though contentiously, I might add) the feelings of the developing middle class largely fell in line with these nationalist goals that were being thrown around. I would argue that it was less that their interests were the same, and more that both working and middle classes were anti-aristocracy, especially after the experiences of [Enlightened Absolutism](_URL_0_) in the 1700s, and of course the overthrow of monarchical authority during the French Revolution. \n\nThe spark was provided in Italy, with a small scale revolt in Sicily. The real wave of revolutionary fervour was started by the 1848 French Revolution, with numerous other western nations riding the wave of revolutionary fervour, much as like happened with the Northern African and Arab countries in 2011. Revolution reached as far as Western Ukraine, and arguably reached a global scale in South America, though I again see this as a tenuous link to draw. Even the peace in Britain during this period was broken (albeit peacefully) by Chartist agitation, which resulted in mass rallies calling for the repeal of the Corn Laws, which effectively prohibited foreign trade of corn. Its original intention 30 years earlier was to help struggling farmers in a time of high wages and prices, but in a rapidly expanding and increasingly commercialised world, this became ineffective."
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lnyj5 | why do people still vouch for supply-side economics? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lnyj5/eli5_why_do_people_still_vouch_for_supplyside/ | {
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"This is an answer I gave this in r/asksocialscience about a month ago _URL_0_",
"This is an answer I gave this in r/asksocialscience about a month ago _URL_0_"
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fgx0ft | Do satellites maintain the same velocity forever? | Today in my physics class we talked about the gravitational field and about the elliptical orbit of satellites. My question now is if the satellite would continue to be accelerated and slowed down by the gravitational field of the earth forever? And if so wouldn‘t that mean that no energy is converted (for example in heat)? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fgx0ft/do_satellites_maintain_the_same_velocity_forever/ | {
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"I'm going to answer your question, but just because somebody will \"correct\" me if I don't touch on it first: in an elliptical orbit, the velocity does change, because the speed and direction of the satellite's motion is changing throughout the orbit. But of course I understand what you mean - whether an orbit loses energy, or whether it can keep on going on forever.\n\nIn practical terms, yes, orbits can and do lose energy. In particular, this happens in low Earth orbit, because there's still a very thin amount of atmosphere up there. This produces a weak drag force, which has to be countered. The International Space Station actually has to have little boosts now and again, or else it will start to slow down and fall to the Earth.\n\nSatellites and the Earth are also not perfect spheres, and there are also other gravitating bodies in the solar system. These effects can produce mild torques on satellite orbits that can cause their orbits to precess. If things are aligned right, this can sometimes add up to quite a significant effect.\n\nBut even in an idealised universe where you can ignore all of those effects, the system will still radiate gravitational waves, which means that the system is *extremely* slowly losing energy, and the satellite could theoretically slow down and plummet to Earth. But in reality, for anything but the most massive objects, this is absurdly slow. Real satellites would be affected more by space gas or the Moon or Jupiter than by gravitational waves."
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p4mwt | What is the trick to making a Rupert's drop? | I understand the basic technique and the science behind making a Rupert's drop but I can't seem to duplicate the results. Does anyone know the trick to making one?
_URL_0_ | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/p4mwt/what_is_the_trick_to_making_a_ruperts_drop/ | {
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"When I did it in my materials science lab as an undergrad we used a bunsen burner to melt glass stirring rods and let it drop into a bucket of ice water. How are you doing it?"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Rupert's_Drop"
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brb4t7 | how do all these different fruit and plant seeds form? | Where did the first apple seed or orange seed come from? Googling it doesn't come up with a straightforward answer. I'm assuming that just like the What came first he chicken or egg debate, the seed came first however, where did that first seed originate from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/brb4t7/eli5_how_do_all_these_different_fruit_and_plant/ | {
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"There wasn't an identifiable first apple or orange seed. They would have evolved from some preceding plant species slowly over time. So over thousands of generations the preceding plant becomes more and more like an apple or orange tree until eventually it matches what we would recognize as an apple or orange tree but there wasn't a single point where you could say one generation wasn't an apple or orange tree and the next was. Think of it like a person aging. Any given day they won't look any different than the day before but look at two pictures taken 20 years apart and you will see how they aged."
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4xxrsj | What significance did the shape of the bomb dropped in Nagasaki have? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4xxrsj/what_significance_did_the_shape_of_the_bomb/ | {
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"The \"active\" part of the Nagasaki bomb was an immensely heavy egg-shaped collection of high explosives, uranium metal, a plutonium core, and a lot of complicated electronics. The casing was developed to hold all that together and keep it from rolling violently (which could damage the electronics) and more or less have predictable aerodynamic properties (it was not ideal, but it worked). \n\nIf you could see it in an X-ray it [would look like this](_URL_0_) — a very snug fit. (This is taken from a declassified manual regarding the electronics system maintenance of these kinds of bombs.) [This visualization](_URL_1_) gives you an indication of the different parts on display there.\n\nIt is entirely functional — there is not really any \"aesthetics\" or \"symbolism\" to it, just aerodynamics."
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erfec8 | how is that alcohol 70% is better than alcohol 90% as disinfectant ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/erfec8/eli5_how_is_that_alcohol_70_is_better_than/ | {
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"70% alcohol has 30% water, and that water is necessary for the alcohol to interact at all with the cells it’s killing.\n\nIt’s like cooking pancakes. You know how when your pan is really hot and you put in pancake batter, it cooks the outside really fast? And then you can flip it, but it does the same thing to the other side and the middle doesn’t cook very well? 90% alcohol is like that. It doesn’t penetrate well into cells or clumps of microbes because it just fries everything it touches on the outside. The 70% alcohol is like cooking on medium heat with a moderately hot pan. It contacts the outside, too, but the water helps it penetrate to cook the inside (denature proteins deeper) as well. \n\nFrom _URL_2_\n\n > The presence of water is a crucial factor in destroying or inhibiting the growth of pathogenic microorganisms with isopropyl alcohol. Water acts as a catalyst and plays a key role in denaturing the proteins of vegetative cell membranes. 70% IPA solutions penetrate the cell wall more completely which permeates the entire cell, coagulates all proteins, and therefore the microorganism dies. Extra water content slows evaporation, therefore increasing surface contact time and enhancing effectiveness. Isopropyl alcohol concentrations over 91% coagulate proteins instantly. Consequently, a protective layer is created which protects other proteins from further coagulation.\n\n > Solutions > 91% IPA may kill some bacteria, but require longer contact times for disinfection, and enable spores to lie in a dormant state without being killed. A 50% isopropyl alcohol solution kills Staphylococcus Aureus in less than 10 seconds (pg. 238), yet a 90% solution with a contact time of over two hours is ineffective.\n\nEdit: Because there’s been some confusion, I’d like to add two points. First, higher concentrations of alcohol solutions (specifically isopropyl) may still be superior as solvents, for use on things like electronics for cleaning, because water is generally bad for electronics. Second, what we’re talking about above you should think of as referring only to ethanol and isopropyl alcohol (which is not safe to consume). There are other alcohols but we’re just sticking to the ones commonly used.\n\nEdit 2: Some people have questioned the source, which is good and part of science. The source offered a decent write-up of what numerous PhD mentors have taught me, and it’s consistent with the science. At the risk of making this too long, here’s what the CDC has to say, from _URL_0_ \n\nAdding water enhances effectiveness of isopropyl and ethyl alcohols: \n\n > The most feasible explanation for the antimicrobial action of alcohol is denaturation of proteins. This mechanism is supported by the observation that absolute ethyl alcohol, a dehydrating agent, is less bactericidal than mixtures of alcohol and water because proteins are denatured more quickly in the presence of water \n\nIsopropanol and ethanol effective bactericides\n\n > The bactericidal activity of various concentrations of ethyl alcohol (ethanol) was examined against a variety of microorganisms in exposure periods ranging from 10 seconds to 1 hour 483. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was killed in 10 seconds by all concentrations of ethanol from 30% to 100% (v/v), and Serratia marcescens, E, coli and Salmonella typhosa were killed in 10 seconds by all concentrations of ethanol from 40% to 100%. The gram-positive organisms Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes were slightly more resistant, being killed in 10 seconds by ethyl alcohol concentrations of 60%–95%. Isopropyl alcohol (isopropanol) was slightly more bactericidal than ethyl alcohol for E. coli and S. aureus 489.\n\nKills viruses at these concentrations \n > Ethyl alcohol, at concentrations of 60%–80%, is a potent virucidal agent inactivating all of the lipophilic viruses (e.g., herpes, vaccinia, and influenza virus) and many hydrophilic viruses (e.g., adenovirus, enterovirus, rhinovirus, and rotaviruses but not hepatitis A virus (HAV) 58 or poliovirus) 49. \n\nIsopropanol similar to chlorhexidine\n_URL_1_",
"When you put high concentrations of alcohol on a microbe, it immediately goes into defense mode. For some bacteria this means turning into spores. Then they wait until the offending agent is gone, and re-emerge from their spores. However, the lower concentrations aren’t recognized as quickly by the bacteria, giving it more time to kill the bacteria before it had the opportunity to raise its defenses.",
"As a pharmaceutical production technician,I use 70% Isopropyl alcohol daily. The 30% sterilized water allows it time to spread the alcohol over the surface without evaporating too fast. I believe it takes about 15 seconds of contact time for it to disinfect, but at 90% it would only last 5 seconds so not enough time to fully kill even half the bacteria/spores. \nPlus 70% IPA smells good as hell.",
"Kind of a follow up question. Which one should you use for evaporating water out of your ears?\n\nWhen I was a kid we would use 90% if we had stubborn water that we couldn't shake out but if you got to western with the alcohol it would hurt.",
"There are many responses already about 70% being a better disinfectant, but it's important to keep in mind that this is about being a disinfectant only. For instance, for cleaning residue off like if you want to prep a surface for glue application or any coating where you want a clean surface, 99% IPA may be better because it quickly evaporates. There's more more chance of dust and residue from slower evaporating products like 70% IPA, as well as water reacting with stuff (e.g. electronics), which is why I stick to using 90% or 99% IPA in those cases.",
"I didn't know it was better as a disinfectant. It's definitely not better as a detergent. Mixing salt and alcohol makes the most effective cleaning solution I am aware of, and 90% is absolutely better than 70% for that.\n\nInteresting.",
"To add to OP, why does alcohol this strong kill microbes yet humans can literally drink 70% ethanol and be fine? Why can we use it to clean our pores and oily skin without much harm but it seemingly instantly kills microbes?",
"It has to do with evaporation but to be clear alcohol isn't a very good disinfectant in the first place. It's more of a germicide.\n\nYou need a large contact time, if it evaporates you're not soaking. Soaking tools in it works well. In soaking you find the strongest stuff you can find (we use denatured alcohol so 100%) With surfaces it's almost always recommended to use bleach as a disinfectant, (which can still have a soak time of 10-15 min) and alcohol as the noncorrosive, sterile cleaner to wipe up the bleach residue.\n\nO and for most phenolic disinfectants like lysol, they need to dry on the surface. If you don't let them dry you're reducing their effectiveness. \n\nMy whole family is in this world. I work in medical device manufacturing where everything has to be kept sterile (we make alcohol swabs and we have to sterilize the alcohol tanks), my sister is the environmental and health manager for a hospital (she is directly responsible for any hospital born pathogens), my father managers the water treatment and supply for our town. \n\nAlso people at all your major colleges say the same thing. \n\n_URL_0_",
"I for one use it for athletes foot and jock itch.\nIt’s the only thing that really works.\nThis is all good info I didn’t know before.",
"The alcohol works by denaturing proteins and disrupting membranes. In order to do a good job of this it needs enough contact time to propagate along transmembrane proteins through to the other side, before it evaporates.\n\nFor proteins, it is disrupting the hydration shell of water and changing the shape of the protein, often making it clump together.\n\nFor membranes, it is disrupting a phospholipid bilayer so that the cell can't keep its insides inside or its outsides outside.\n\nBoth of these processes require a bit of time, which the water content of 70% isopropanol provides.\n\nEdit: I will add that laboratory testing confirms that 70% isopropanol is in fact better at killing bacteria than 90% isopropanol.",
"I've heard that if you take that 70% alcohol disinfectant and dilute it with 1 part 70% alchohol and 9 parts of water, then take one part of the resulting mixture and dilute it in another 9 parts of water and repeat this process a lot of times eventually you'll end up with a disinfectant that is so strong it will kill you on contact.",
"So should I clean my bong with 70% or 90%?",
"One of these things I learned on reddit a while ago.\n\nPS, Tip: Because I can only get 96% alcohol here:\n\n182ml alcohol (96%) + 68ml distilled (!) Water = 70% Alcohol.\n\nSo I am always mixing a batch of \"good\" alcohol. But the 96% I use like it is for cleaning stuff, electronics etc.",
"The water kills the cell barriers, and the water getting in is what kills the cells. +90% also evaporates too fast, which means the alcohol has less time to work.\n\n70% for disinfecting, 90% for cleaning PC parts (because of the lack of water content and how fast it evaporates).",
"70% alcohol “tricks” bacteria/microorganisms into thinking that it’s water, so the bacteria will open up its spores to take it in, which ends up killing it.",
"Similar-ish thing is observed in case of salt as well. Till 4% conc, salt actually helps bacteria to grow. Further increasing conc will kill them.\n(For most of the bacteria, not all of them)"
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"https://blog.gotopac.com/2017/05/15/why-is-70-isopropyl-alcohol-ipa-a-better-disinfectant-than-99-isopropanol-and-what-is-ipa-used-for/"
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4d7sa0 | Why is mathematics so applicable to all the phenomena we can observe and describe in the universe? | Everything can be explained mathematically. Why? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4d7sa0/why_is_mathematics_so_applicable_to_all_the/ | {
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"Why is painting so good at reproducing the way the universe looks? Because we invented painting in order to be good at reproducing the way the universe works. Why is math so good at describing the things we observe in the universe? Because we invented math to be good at describing the things that we observe in the universe.\n\nEvolutionary it seems to be advantageous to create patterns. Patterns are things we see and then use to infer what will happen to things that we can't see. Patterns are not of the universe, but are created by us (see optical illusions for some clearly artificial patterns). At some time in the past, we needed to be able to communicate patterns between ourselves and so language was created. But as our patterns became more sophisticated, we needed a more exact way to communicate them, and numbers were invented. Since numbers were invented to communicate sophisticated patterns, they're really good at helping us create new patterns. Eventually, people enjoyed it so much that it evolved from being a language into being an art for it's own sake.\n\nIt is totally reasonable and expected that math would be effective in the physical sciences. We invented it to be really good at making patterns, so we shouldn't worship it or ascribe any nontrivial metaphysical properties to it when it does what it was created to do. Math is very sophisticated and most people who use it in practice, applied to the real world, are not trained in it's sophistication. They know enough to do their job. Because they haven't studied it in detail or at the level of abstraction it was meant to be at, they don't understand how it can be so good at finding patterns and some infer that it must be mystical. But, as has been seen many times in the past, a lack of understanding does not justify metaphysical conclusions. \n\n\nMath doesn't explain everything, it's just that the things that can be explained by math are patterns and math does patterns really well.\n\nIt should be noted that this is philosophical question with no actual answer, this is my interpretation and arguments. I also have a bigger spiel about it, you can find more [here](_URL_0_). ",
"You might be interested in this famous paper by Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner: [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences](_URL_0_)",
"One thing to bear in mind is that in the vast majority of cases those neat, tidy closed-form expressions that we see as describing physical phenomena are only close approximations—even in theory. Especially so with the formulae we study up to, say, post-graduate physics. It's only since the second half of the 20th century that we have been able to routinely work with, for example, strong enough electric fields to have to worry about—and make use of—the non-linear terms that always were there, but were waved away as negligible…which for a very long time they were.\n\nYou pose an essentially philosophical question and many people quite legitimately question the application of real numbers and continuous functions between sets of them to describe the physical world. Are there open intervals in nature? What would such a thing look like? If there are not, how are we justified in a using the apparatus of mathematical analysis on measurements?\n\n/u/functor7 has it right—mathematics does so well (but still has substantial areas of weakness) in describing the world because that's what we invented it for: surveying land, understanding the rise and fall of the water in a river, knowing when the seasons will turn. But we are pattern finding, and making, machines so we've taken our description of the patterns we found in nature and made more patterns from those, and more from those, and so on."
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|
|
5hc3og | please explain how the current wage gap in america works. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hc3og/eli5_please_explain_how_the_current_wage_gap_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"daz2bz2"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"There is no wage gap. At least not in how you likely think. \n\nThe 75% number often thrown around for women is based on all jobs for women averaged and compared to all jobs for men averaged. That gives you false information. Men hold a larger percentage of the top paying jobs. This is often because they work more overtime, take fewer sick days, and do not take time off to have/raise children often. This means that they will get promotions more often because they have done more work. It is also due to the fact that women tend to gravitate toward lower paying jobs such as Nurse, teacher, and lots of jobs in the humanities. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
1l2xh0 | I heard that diamonds do not show up on x-rays. Is this true and if so, why? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1l2xh0/i_heard_that_diamonds_do_not_show_up_on_xrays_is/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbv8y6x"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text": [
"All matter absorbs X-rays depending on the atomic density: the higher the density, and the heavier the element, the more X-rays are absorbed. Since carbon is about as lightweight an element as you can get, X-rays can pass through diamonds without being absorbed (meaning they \"don't show up\" in a conventional radiography)."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
5wwq9m | Did Napoleon and Wellington ever meet face-to-face? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5wwq9m/did_napoleon_and_wellington_ever_meet_facetoface/ | {
"a_id": [
"deee2i6"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"No they never met face to face. Though they faced each across the battlefield at Waterloo Napoleon fled for Paris after his defeat and eventually surrendered to the British at Rochefort. At no time despite his captivity in British custody did he and Wellington ever meet face to face."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
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