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7lalsg | Why do some programs hog resources, but the project file is only some kilobytes? | For example, Fl Studio, Premiere Pro, Photoshop | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Why do some programs hog resources, but the project file is only some kilobytes? If I give you a shopping list which includes 300 items, how difficult is it to carry that list? Probably not difficult, you could list all that on a single sheet of paper. Now how hard is it to carry all the items on the list? Probably impossible! The project file just points at other files on the disk and the program needs to load those other files in order to work with them. That your project file or shopping list isn't very large is irrelevant.",
"Scenario 1: Imagine I give you a copy of War and Peace to read. You read it slowly, one page at a time, taking regular breaks to do other things. It takes you a while to read it, but you read it all. But during the time you were reading it, you were not so busy that you had no time to do anything else. Scenario 2: I give you the same copy of War and Peace, and ask you to read the first paragraph of chapter 5. It doesn't take very long. Because it doesn't take very long, you quickly finish the job and move on to other things. Scenario 3: I give you a scientific equation to study and understand. The equation is only one page long - much shorter than War and Peace. But it takes you a while to get your head around it. And during that time, you really don't want to be disturbed, because you don't want to lose your train of thought. You can't really do anything else until you've understood the equation. Conclusion - the amount of brain power it takes to do a task is not in any way related to the amount of data associated with the task. Your examples are like scenario 3 - not that much data, but the little data there is requires a *lot* of processing."
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7lanhs | Why are physical businesses allowed to deny service to customers for any reason, but online services like Twitter or Facebook receive backlash for banning people with extreme views? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Being legally allowed to do something does not mean that one is immune to criticism for that choice to do so. That's what freedom is all about - the ability to (within legality) do and say what you want - but also the responsibility of the consequences of those actions regardless of whether you think you deserve them or not.",
"You're mixing up public reaction and legal issues. Both physical businesses & online businesses are **legally** allowed to refuse service for \"any or no reason\" (with the exception of legally protected things like race or religion). When Twitter bans some white supremacist, they're *in no legal trouble* for it, they're simply facing **negative public opinion**. There are no legal consequences of this act. A local business could easily face the same sort of backlash, the Internet just creates a way for the small minority of people who care to be very vocal. You need to remember that your whole idea of what's \"popular\" is broken by the scale of the Internet. When you're in a school of 500 kids, 20 people doing something is a lot of people. If you're in a city of 1,000,000 people, those same 20 are easily ignored - you'd need hundreds, if not thousands, of people to show up at a protest for it to make any sort of impact. When you scale up to the hundreds of millions of people online, 5-10 thousand people is a *completely insignificant group* - even if you instinctively think it's a lot of people that really care (add in the fact that retweeting something takes a *lot* less effort and commitment than actually showing up at a protest). So, the online outrage machine you see in action when Twitter bans some neo-nazi is really the equivalent to 2-3 angry guys sitting outside a restaurant in your home town with signs.",
"Physical businesses can be subject to significant backlash (= lawsuits that go to the Supreme Court) if they deny services to people for illegal reasons. You are incorrect in your presumption that a sign saying \"We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone\" actually means that doing that is legal. It's just a sign, and signs can say untrue things in a free speech country.",
"First, physical businesses CAN'T deny service \"for any reason\", at least not legally. Second, they often do receive public backlash for their decisions and policies, including who they do and do not wish to serve. Public backlash is not unique to online services or restricted to them in any way.",
"There are many legal reasons to deny service to somebody... like harassing other users. Both Reddit and restaurants/bars/stores ban people for \"uncivil\" behavior all the time. Or the person has a history of non-payment/theft or there's suspicion that the person is using a stolen credit card, fake ID, or doing something else \"sketchy\". Steam and other gaming sites ban people for this sort of thing (which is sometimes controversial), physical stores can and do this as well. It is illegal to refuse service based on race, gender, age, religion, and a few other protected aspects of the person's identity-- in the United States at least. It's controversial right now whether homosexuality is one of the items you *can't* deny people service for. The uproar is closely related to who is the victim and how motivated they are to make a big deal out of it. I'd say most gay people who are denied service because they're gay are happy to not give their money to the business, and never go there again. But every once in a while they want to correct the injustice that exists, and you get a court case. The internet is a great venue for loud, widespread (but not always very effective) outrage.",
"In the case of Twitter, the CEO Jack Dorsey made it seem like the platform was a bastion of free speech. \"Twitter stands for freedom of expression,\" Dorsey declared. \"Twitter stands for speaking truth to power.\" Some people think that he mislead investors by branding the platform as something that it's not.",
"In US law there's the concept of a \"protected class\". Race and religion are explicitly protected classes and a business cannot legally discriminate based on those classes under most circumstances. But there are exceptions. \"Extreme views\" are not a protected class. But it's all fuzzy, between the Civil Rights Act, EEO, and ADA."
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7lank0 | What makes stainless steel “stainless”? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Stainless\" steel has a high chromium content. The chromium forms an oxide coating which makes it less susceptible to corrosion and chemical reaction than carbon steel.",
"It's a steel/chromium alloy; the chromium reacts with the oxygen in water to create a protective film around the metal and prevent oxidation (rust) from forming on the steel part. At the molecular level, it *does* corrode almost instantly on the outside, but it creates a layer of corrosion so tight and thin that it doesn't interact with light, and it's not detectable without modern instruments; but the layer of rust around the rest of the metal protects the rest of the metal from further corrosion. [I learned the last paragraph from this article, which is a nice read if you want to know a bit more in-depth info about the topic]( URL_0 )",
"straight steel is made with a mixture of carbon and iron. iron reacts with oxygen to form brown crumbly rust. stainless steel is made with a mixture of carbon and iron and a hint of nickel and chromium. when chromium reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere, it forms chromium oxide which blocks oxygen penetration. the surface film then protects the underlying iron from exposure and forming rust.",
"When you buy stainless steel cutlery, you normally buy 18/10, 18/8 or 18/0 steel. The 18 indicates the amount of chromium, the other variable number indicates the percentage of nickel in the steel. The more nickel, the better protection against rust. With nickel, the steel is harder however, and thus won’t get scratched as easily.",
"Nickel helps change the iron crystal structure from body centered cubic to face centered cubic. A face centered cubic crystal structure has more space for other atoms such as chromium to enter the crystal lattice. Chromium has the benefits as described in previous posts.",
"The three main components of stainless steel are Iron, Nickel, and Chromium. When iron corrodes, it forms a large crystal structure that exposes more iron to oxygen, allowing further corrosion. With water available, the iron oxide will form even larger crystals and greatly accelerate this process. This is how rust propagates and can cause embrittlement in iron alloys. Chromium and nickel oxidize by forming a thin layer of oxides without disrupting the surrounding lattice, and therefore do not expose more material to oxygen nor weaken the material. To make steel stainless, we not only need to alloy with chromium (iron and nickel are still steel, just not stainless), but remove any iron from the outside layer such that only chromium is present. This process is called passivation, and there are a number of ways to do this, but the most common is with a warm bath of acid. The acid leaches iron out of the outermost layers, leaving only chromium, which will form a ‘passive’ layer of oxide which will protect deeper layers of the part. So why do stainless steels still rust? There are a number of ways to disrupt or damage this protective chromium layer, but a very common and interesting one is salt. Chloride ions in salt will attach the chromium oxide layer and strip it off. This is why cars made of stainless steel will rust in places that use a lot of salt on the roads in winter. Another mechanism is deep scratches through the passive chromium layer can expose iron, which will begin its chain reaction corrosion process.",
"On the same theme of oxidised metal making chrome and nickel bearing steel alloys seem always shiny silver, and aluminum more like dull grey, there is an alloy of steel called HTLA for High Tensile Low Alloy which is an alloy of steel with small amounts of nickel, copper and other metals that makes the red rust extremely tight to the base metal underneath, so although the metal rusts like steel, the rust forms a protective layer that prevents penetration of more rust. Good for bridges, some parts of ship hulls where strength and lighter weight is worth an extra cost, and its cheaper than the stainless steels with fewer stress fracturing and fatigue problems long term.",
"Stainless steel is a combination of iron, which is strong and magnetic but susceptible to corrosion, and chromium, which is resistant to corrosion. The combination provides the advantages of both metals."
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7lap0a | How to mass quantities of illegal man made drugs end up on the street? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People rob pharmacies or pharma trucks, sell their unused leftover prescriptions, or bribe people in the medical industry to prescribe them as much as possible so that they can sell it to turn a profit. Basically criminals doing various criminal shit.",
"I think the answer depends on if you think authorities are actively trying to prevent this from happening, or somehow complicit in it happening."
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7lapdo | Does the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics mean that with time our ecosystem with be more chaotic? | 2) Second law of thermodynamics: In a natural thermodynamic process, the sum of the entropies of the interacting thermodynamic systems increases. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the second kind (machines that spontaneously convert thermal energy into mechanical work) are impossible. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Does the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics mean that with time our ecosystem with be more chaotic? No. Earth is not a closed system so entropy does not need to increase within it.",
"No. Entropy is something that is commonly misunderstood but it's a molecular phenomenon, it doesn't necessarily apply at higher scales. You can mix up a bunch of people with two colours of shirts in a room and ask them to sort into groups with the same colour shirts and they will be perfectly capable of doing that without violating any fundamental physical laws. Entropy is still increasing - they are converting chemical energy into heat, increasing the entropy of them and their surrounding. Entropy is *not* the same thing as a human interpretation of order.",
"Only more chaotic on a molecular level. Definitely not a poetic one. Would you consider two cups of warm water more chaotic than one cup of hot water and one cup of cold? Or a room full of gas more chaotic than the same gas in a small canister?",
"Not necessarily. The universe as a whole will increase in overall entropy. But this will not prevent localized *decreases* in entropy in specific areas, such as ecosystems on Earth."
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7layia | How are " Sun Dogs " created? | [ Examples of a Sun Dog ]( URL_0 ) | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are rainbows. Ice crystals in the air don't have a shape that splits the colors as well as liquid water droplets do, so they don't look as colorful."
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7lb1iq | how do sores in the mouth heal without scabbing? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"scabs arent vital to the healing process, they're just there to stop dirt and germs from getting into open wounds. the mouth is self-cleaning and inhabited by a beneficial biome of microorganisms that make it harder for newcomers to take root (harder, not impossible), so you dont have to rely on scabs"
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7lb70x | why do you get chills and feel cold when you are sick even though you have a fever and thus are warmer | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your brain sets a temperature to be it’s goal temperature, and then has different mechanisms to reach that temperature (sweating when trying to cool down. Shivering and muscle spasms to heat up). When you get a fever, your brain sets a higher than normal temp as its goal, which will make you feel like you’re cold. Your body will start shivering, blood vessels will contract to isolate heat, and you will put on more clothes and blankets. When the fever ends, your brain will set it’s goal temp back to normal, and you will start feeling warm and begin to sweat to lower your temperature. As such, a fever only means your brain sets a new temperature to reach, just like when you increase the thermostat. It’s other mechanisms, like the heater in your house, that will bring the temperature to where the thermostat wants it."
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7lb74l | What exactly causes body heat, and how do we produce more if we are too cold, and less if we are too warm? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"To maintain our optimal temperature, our bodies go through what's called a negative feedback loop, so when our body temp moves too far either way from that ideal temp, mechanisms kick in to push it back to where it's supposed to be. When the body gets too cold, the hypothalamus in our brain senses it and sends signals to the body telling the blood vessels to contract and the muscles to shiver to generate body heat by using energy. Your body temperature increases and eventually returns to where it's supposed to be which turns off the mechanisms increasing temperature. The same things happen when you are too hot but the hypothalamus instead tells the body dilate blood vessels in the skin to let go of extra heat and to increase sweat production. This cools the body until its the right temp and that again turns off those mechanisms. Source: AP Biology Textbook",
"Others have commented on the feedback mechanisms that keep you at a nice comfortable temperature, so I'll focus on the first part of your question... > What exactly causes body heat? Metabolism! Basically, your cells break down glucose (food) into water and carbon dioxide in order to produce ATP - which is a teeny molecule that acts a bit like a battery, containing chemical energy held in atomic bonds that powers your body (when those bonds are broken, energy is released to do whatever it is you need doing). The chemical reactions that convert food into ATP, and the subsequent use of this ATP, isn't particularly efficient however, with as much as 60% of the energy stored in the chemical bonds being converted to heat energy instead of chemical energy. Essentially, when you break a chemical bond, along with providing energy to the thing you want powering, nearby molecules get a little extra jiggling too, which is heat. This is where most of your body heat is generated - so in a way your body almost *literally* burns calories. You also generate some heat through friction. Every time something moves anywhere, as before, nearby molecules get a little extra jiggling, or heat, from the motion. So along with your body producing heat via chemical means, the action of, say, your muscles moving or blood flowing also produces heat. This is one reason why you shiver when you're cold; your brain is telling your muscles to dance so they can make a lil' heat and warm you up (as well as to burn more glucose)."
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7lb8a7 | How do bees survive the winter? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They all go in the hive and make a large ball out of themselves, then they beat their wings and wiggle to keep warm. Hives can be pretty balmy in the winter, but you have to reduce the height down to about 3 feet so the bee ball fills most of the hive. For wild bees the idea is the same except their hive is already the right size so they all pile in and keep warm",
"In addition to the wiggling that was already mentioned, they frequently trade places inside their \"balls\", so everyone gets some time on the warm \"inside\" to keep the \"outer layer\" of bees from freezing",
"They eat the honey, that's why they made it, and rub their bodies and wings together to generate muscle heat (the process mammals use).",
"When I was a beekeeper we would come to a yard that was completely buried. The bee boxes (hives) would contain several feet to maybe a yard of melted snow around the hive. They produced that much heat They would form ball in the hive and eat honey, and sugar that we would feed them to keep them going through the winter.",
"Pretty sure they use the wax they’ve made in the summer to make candles that can burn all winter to provide warmth. I read it in a book one time."
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7lbalq | What would happen to you if you if every part of your body except your head was submerged. Would you die? Would your skin melt off? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It'd have to be very special water (temperature and salinity), and still I think there's a limit just because human skin is not designed for continual submersion. David Blaine did an [underwater endurance gig for seven days]( URL_1 ) and [described it as agonizing]( URL_0 ).",
"You would start having a pretty bad time after a few days. While the human body can survive being mostly submerged for extended periods eventually our skin starts to break down and that is 100% not good. We're land creatures not sea creatures.",
"World War I soldiers whose lower legs were immersed in water in trenches for hours at a time developed trench foot. This is one kind of \"water immersion foot syndrome\" that you can get. Depending on the temperature and cleanliness of the water, various things could happen, all bad. The skin quickly breaks down. Feet turn red or blue depending on if they're cold or warm. Swelling and blistering occur. Infections set in. Then the feet may need to be amputated. If treated quickly, they will likely recover but have nerve damage and permanent scars, and the affected areas may become reddened for a long period of time. If your entire body is submerged, it's going to be even worse. Back in 1985, there was the tragedy of a 13 year old girl who was trapped in water in the wake of a Colombian volcanic eruption. She was adorable, and well-articulated her plight. Her name was Omayra Sanchez. Cameras focused on her and newspeople interviewed her. She lived for about 60 hours trapped in water. She died from either hypothermia or gangrene."
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7lbpxo | Why do Furniture stores always have numerous "Going out of business" sales when they really aren't? | Is this a marketing strategy exclusively for furniture stores? I really don't understand this since it's pretty clear they aren't closing down. I never come across lets say, a grocery store that does this. Same thing for clothing stores or electronic stores unless they are liquidating the products they are selling and closing down afterwards. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Rug stores famously do this too. It's a technique used for things that people buy very infrequently, so they have no \"favorite store\" that they constantly go to, and often could choose to postpone their purchase or shop elsewhere. This fake sale makes them think \"oh, I need to go to this store, and I'd better go quickly.\"",
"> Same thing for clothing stores or electronic stores unless they are liquidating the products they are selling and closing down afterwards. This is actually part of the corporate history of Best Buy. They were a local electronics store in the 70s -- the kind with pushy salespeople who got paid on commission. Their store got hit by a tornado in 1981 and they had to liquidate all of their merchandise because the roof was gone in a \"Tornado Madness Sale\". They made so much money off this liquidation sale that they repeated it every year, eventually changed their corporate business model, expanded nationwide, etc.",
"\"going out of business\" could mean \"I sold the furniture store to someone who wanted a furniture store but I want to get rid of as much inventory as possible first\" So the store is still there but it's a \"new\" business. Also, brick and mortar retail is hurting... I can't imagine running a store with expensive items like furniture that don't sell all that often. Like how many times does a typical family buy a couch in their life."
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7lby8u | Do animals understand music? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Melodies, rhythms, and tones are heard by animals. Many animals often detect them much more effectively than humans do, in fact! However, music is more than just notes. Every musical progression or \"riff\" is rooted in a socio-historical status: it means something to the listener(s) because it was derived from an earlier \"riff\" that means something to the listener(s). This is part of why Western music uses the archetypical \"Four Chords of Pop\", which refers to a simple note progression using the chords and associated sub-notes of four root notes in the specified key. The effect of these chords in this order is a relatively-upbeat song that can be easily remembered and supported with even amateur dance techniques. The reason for this association of this progression, however, is not merely because of the progression itself being \"upbeat\". Hell, when non-Western audiences are exposed to Western pop songs they find the music of a \"meh\" status more often than not. Instead, if you look at classical music, many of the pieces by \"great classical composers\" utilize an analogous progression. The \"Four Chords\" is a simplification of what Western audiences already considered \"popular dance music\", and thus by extension the \"Four Chords\" are representative of Western \"popular dance music\". ----- This is also why Western, particularly American rock music often utilizes \"Western\"/\"Cowboy\" elements. Many 80's and 90's \"Hard Rock\" bands even outright reference this in their music, a la \"Steel Horse\" and \"Loaded Six-String\". Heavier Rock music is thematically and musically derived from Blues and Country music, thus the \"American Western\" elements from the latter appear constantly in the former. Meanwhile, you look at 90's and 00's Japanese hard rock and \"Visual Kei\", often inspired outright by the likes of said 80's and 90's predominately-American Hard Rock and Glam Rock bands...and there are almost none of these \"Country\"/\"Cowboy\" aspects to the music. The elements were dropped because they weren't culturally relevant and didn't connect socially or historically with the Japanese culture who enjoyed the American music enough to want to create their own analogous music. ----- Without the cultural and social history and relevance, entire chunks of musical works and genres are dropped or ignored by other humans. They recognize the musical aspect, but don't care about what is being said or sung or played. Non-human animals take this apathy up a couple dozen notches.",
"I definitely saw some study a while ago claiming that dogs enjoy reggae- [here’s something about that]( URL_0 ) - so I assume that other animals probably have similar understandings of music.",
"[At least parrots can feel rythm]( URL_0 ). I've also seen a video of an elephant bopping to the beat.",
"When I play piano, my cat sits nearby and doesnt move much. Same with my birds, they call more when I play. There are alao videos around of animals and music, so Im quite convinced they do understand the music or the rhythm or something."
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7lc8hh | How is a single injection of a drug able to provide months of therapy? | My wife is getting a single shot of a drug that will stop her production of estrogen for a full three months. I read about "once a year" injections that can provide months of relief for various conditions. How can a single dose of a medication remain metabolically active for months at a time? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Esterification of an injectable steroid basically accomplishes one thing, it slows the release of the parent steroid from the site of injection. This happens because the ester will notably lower the water solubility of the steroid, and increase its lipid (fat) solubility. This will cause the drug to form a deposit in the muscle tissue, from which it will slowly enter into circulation as it is picked up in small quantities by the blood. Generally, the longer the ester chain, the lower the water solubility of the compound, and the longer it will take to for the full dosage to reach general circulation."
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7lc8pj | How do silicone sheet work to heal scar tissue? | I have used them on various types of scars with different success, but I'm not sure how they work. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's still not entirely certain, but the main idea is that we decrease the amount of collagen made which makes the scar softer and smoother In more detail, there are 4 main aspects that are believed 1) the silicone gel acts to increase hydration, allowing for regulation of fibroblasts and collagen production 2) prevents bacterial invasion and bacterial collagen production 3) it helps to regulate TGFBeta and FGFBeta expression, which serves to decrease collagen production from fibroblasts and increase collagen breakdown 4) it reduces itching which stops you from picking at it"
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7lco2c | The link between pure math and physics | URL_0 I am struggling to understand this. Reddit links here URL_1 | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's really, super abstract. Essentially, what we want to do is find the solutions to algebraic equations that are rational numbers. Eg, x=3/5 and y=4/5 are rational solutions to the algebraic equation x^(2)+y^(2)=1, but x=sqrt(2)/2 and y=sqrt(2)/2 is an irrational solution, so we don't care about it. We want to be able to do this with much more complicated equations that pop up in various fields of math. (A particular one that has, historically, evaded us that we're interested in is, for instance, this equation: y^4 + 5x^4 − 6x^(2)y^(2) + 6x^(3)z + 26x^(2)yz + 10xy^(2)z − 10y^(3)z − 32x^(2)z^(2) − 40xyz^(2) + 24y^(2)z^(2) + 32xz^(3) − 16yz^(3) = 0). What Kim, the subject of the article, has suggested was to take some inspiration from how things work in physics. Generally, if you have particle of light, then you can track where it will go as time progresses, and it will trace out a path in space-time. What Kim has suggested is to set up a number theory kind of space time, and the rational solutions then act like particle of light in this new space. With this, you can track what they do and find them easier. Using this new method, they succeeded in finding all the rational solutions to the above equation (there are seven of them)."
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7lcwif | Why do certain lawns keep their grass green through the winter and others turn brown? | There's an office building near where I live and the grass around it is green all year (I live in Dallas, TX). A golf course near where I work has brown grass now. I'd figure a golf course would want to do what ever the office building does to keep it grass green. Is it a particular breed of grass? Or exceptional lawn care? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mostly it is that there are different types of grass, some GCs overseed in the fall and spring and change between types that can take the cool and the heat - esp on the fairways and greens. Also some more hardy - or versatile grasses are not that good for golf courses. After that it is largely about watering - and feeding, gets expensive for the > 100 acres of a typical GC.",
"There are different kinds of grass, most commonly bermuda and St. Augustine in the Dallas area. I have a neighbor who plants winter rye grass to keep his lawn green year round. It grows in winter and dies in the spring. Per my neighbor, the dying rye grass serves to fertilize the grass coming in."
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7ld1wa | If we are trying to harness the wind and use it as a natural resource for electricity, then why are there windmill farms out there with a stopped windmill? Exceptions being maintenance or malfunction | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drlby4d",
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"text": [
"1) Maintenance, as you guessed. Stuff breaks down; if you visit a normal power plant you'll find a few of their turbines are off as well. 2) You'd think that more wind = better for a windmill, but there's a point where the wind becomes *too* strong, enough to damage the machinery. At that point they have to lock the windmill in place for its own safety. 3) Low demand. It's possible that the grid just didn't need that much power at the time you were driving by, so not all the turbines were active.",
"If *all* the windmills are feathered [turned off] it is likely that there is too much wind or that the wind is somehow bad for the mills. [Example: too gusty to be useful]. If *some* are feathered and some are active, it is likely that the operators are creating enough energy for current demand. If this is the case, turning all the windmills on would likely overload the system and cause damage to one or more spots in the wires or transformers."
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7ld4vr | What makes water freeze in the shape of a snowflake? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drlfghy"
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"text": [
"[This Wikipedia article on hopper crystals]( URL_0 ) is illustrated with the famous shape of bismuth, but it mentions that the phenomenon also applies to water crystals: under the right circumstances the crystal growth is strongest at the edges and corners. In its most extreme form it creates the \"flake\" shape."
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7ldrvd | If absorption of vitamin supplements is better on an empty stomach, why do the directions always say to take with food? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"drlhcu2",
"drllby6",
"drlhfdc",
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"because some of them may make you nauseous and you will throw them back up. Source: took vitamins on empty stomach.",
"Quite a few vitamins absorb better with other organic compounds found in food such as fats.",
"It doesnt work better, just faster. They say to take it with meals because taking pills on an empty stomach can cause nausea and other unpleasant but not dangerous side effects.",
"Certain prescription medications are absorbed better on an empty stomach due to the medication bonding with other compounds and becoming less effective. For instance, common antibiotics like Ciprofloxacin, Levaquin, or Doxycycline should not be taken with multivitamins or dairy due to an interaction with calcium that causes the antibiotic to barely be effective. Thyroid medications should always be taken on an empty stomach and at least an hour before any other medications or food. With multivitamins, it's better to avoid the nausea and eat since the absorption rate is minimally effected by food."
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7ldsfz | How do flares stop missiles? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Heat-seeking missiles home in on the heat being generated by the jet's engine. Countermeasure flares are launched out of an aircraft and immediately ignite in a *very* hot flame. Now instead of seeing only one big hot target the missiles sees a dozen targets, and has to choose one. There is a constant battle between missile engineers and countermeasure engineers to design better and better systems. Missiles that can more accurately discriminate between an engine and a flare, and flares that can more accurately simulate the heat of an engine.",
"Cookie Monster is coming to steal your last chocolate chip cookie, but you're not a sucker. You throw out 20 oatmeal raisen cookies. The chances of him picking the right cookie just went way down.",
"ELI5: Flares only work against missiles that are heat-seeking. The flares burn intensely and create a lot of heat which intends to trick the missile into guiding on the flare itself. If the missile stops guiding onto the target aircraft and instead guides on the flare, then the target aircraft survives and the flare served its purpose.",
"Radar-guided missiles are not distracted by flares. For radar-guided missiles, the target will deploy *chaff* - aluminium coated mylar strips which form a cloud that reflects and confuses the radar on the missile so that the missile misses the target.",
"Other replies have already answered the question, but one thing that gets missed by many is that people who design missiles are continuously developing counter-countermeasures. If the bad guys are able to design a flare that actually works, the missile guys are going to work on software that ignores them or defeats the flare in some other way, or develop a new missile that isn't affected by the flare. Many modern IR missles aren't just seeking hot spots like older systems, they have imaging sensors and flare rejection logic - flares just don't look like a plane. On top of that, it's all about probabilities. It's not like a video game where launching flares causes a missile to miss every time, nor is a missile going to hit the target every time even in good circumstances. There's a never ending cycle of weapon and defense development that goes back to antiquity."
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7ldxsa | why do lithium ion batteries degrade over time? | Why do lithium ion batteries capacity diminishes after each cycle? I'd like to know what happens chemically or structurally. | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I am a battery test engineer. There are many ways lithium batteries can degrade, but since this is ELI5, I'll stick to one main method. Batteries have a few main parts: the anode (negative), the cathode (positive), a separator between them, and some stuff in between (usually a liquid) that conducts ions. When you charge a battery, you are cramming a whole bunch of lithium ions into the anode, kind of like absorbing water into a sponge. When you use the battery, these ions flow to the cathode, generating electric current. Over time, by cramming the ions in and out of the anode and cathode, you begin to damage the 'sponge', so it can't hold as many ions any more. So your efficiency goes down.",
"Entropy. You already know that batteries are a chemical process. It reacts one way to generate electricity which we use to power your devices. When you run electricity into it, it reverses the chemical process so that it can react another day. But nothing ever happens *perfectly*. Something's gotta give. In our case, the electrodes get slowly eaten away in the process and eventually the performance falls below what we find acceptable for running our devices and we get a brand new one.",
"Most traditional batteries have an anode and a cathode. The anode and cathode material is pasted or painted on a current collector. Lithium cobalt oxide is a popular cathode material and carbon/graphite is a popular anode material. Lithium ions are the positively charged particles that intercalate (move) from the anode to the cathode during discharge and from the cathode to the anode during charge. Charge has to be maintained, so electrons flow from current collector to current collector to balance the movement of lithium, resulting in electricity/current flow. During this cycling, some of the lithium ions irreversibly react with other species in the battery and are no longer available to move back and forth between the anode and cathode. This is what causes a loss in capacity. These side reactions can vary, but generally involve lithium moving from an ion in the liquid phase to its solid state or the development of dendrites. A secondary method that can cause capacity loss is the breaking of electrical contact between the anode or cathode material and their respective current collectors because there are some stresses associated with the lithium movement.",
"If i replace an old phone battery, should the phone be almost back to normal?",
"Pinging /u/Mooch315, aka BatteryMooch of /r/electronic_cigarette fame. This question is right up his alley. He is an EE, with extensive knowledge of Lithium Ion batteries, both from designing and manufacturing bespoke electronic devices utilizing Li-Ion batterypacks, as well as from testing Lithium Ion cells used in E-cigs, to insure the safety of the vaping community. He has forgotten more about Lithium Ion cells, than most ever have learned, yet still knows more about them than most. To boot, he is both a gentleman and a scholar, and there’s damn few left of them. He can explain things so everybody, including me (and there are a lot of five year olds way smarter than me), can understand it.",
"For anyone interested in making their batteries last longer. For lithium ion batteries (not other kinds that retain a “memory”), your battery will live longer if you don’t allow it to discharge all the way, say you always kept it above 60%, it may last as much as 3 times longer",
"While there are people here who are knowledgeable about this - why do some batteries of well-known producers inflate?",
"Entropy is the answer for the degradation. Chemically batteries give up and gain electrons. This is called oxidation and reduction. The element giving up the electron is OXIDIZING and the element gaining the election is REDUCING. When the electron leaves an element and goes to the other element that creates voltage. If we look at zinc and copper the voltage given off from an electron leaving zinc and going to copper we would get 1.1V (at standard conditions). To “recharge” you apply current which causes the electrons to move back to the zinc and then flow towards the copper again. As a reaction occurs the elements actually lose and gain mass. So a zinc copper battery has electrons leaving zinc and going towards copper. At the end of the reaction the copper cathode(positive side of battery) will be bigger than when it started and the anode (negative side of battery) will be smaller. Due to entropy and us living in an imperfect world after so many charges there will be an abundance of electrons on one side or another causing a cathode or anode to be bigger. The cathode and anode sit inside a solution of its own salt. So the zinc will sit in something like ZnNO3 and the copper will be in CuNO3. These are electrolytes because they both disassociate to form Zn + NO3 and Cu + NO3. So as the reaction occurs and electrons are transferred to the cathode the Cu is taken out of solution and forms onto the solid copper. Thus making the cathode bigger."
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7le2fq | Why does heating stainless steel very hot make it turn different rainbow colors? | Explaining what I've done: I used a butane torch to heat a small sculpting tool, and I noticed at first, it had turned black after a few seconds of heating off the torch, I let it cool and tried to wipe the black (whatever) off, it did not come off. However, I decided to continue heating the stainless steel tool, and noticed it turned from a black color, to a rainbow color before starting to glow orange. I let it cool, and now it has a permanent rainbow color to it, which actually looks pretty cool. Here is a photo of what I'm talking about: URL_0 The one in the front is the one I heated, the one in the back is brand new. ELI5, Why does this happen? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"drlkrj1"
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"text": [
"When you heat stainless steel like that, the thickness of the chromium oxide that coats the outside of the steel and makes it stainless changes. The heat grows the layer. The layer reflects light differently based on how thick it is, so you get a rainbow effect."
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7le4oy | What happens in your body that makes you lazy and tired after a huge meal? | why does food coma occur? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drlma5n"
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"text": [
"Your body's autonomic (non-voluntary) nervous system is subdivided into the [sympathetic]( URL_0 ) and the [parasympathetic]( URL_1 ) nervous systems. The sympathetic is often referred to as the fight or flight system. This is what makes your heart rate speed up and your adrenaline pump when you do something like watch a scary movie. It preps your body to do some quick physical activity that may save you from a bad situation. The parasympathetic system is often referred to as the rest and digest system. This is what you feel kicking into gear when you eat a huge meal. Sometimes these systems work in unison (like in reproduction), but mostly the arousal of one tamps down the activity of the other. This has it's advantages. Diverting blood-flow away from digestion and to your muscles gave our ancestors an increased chance of escaping predators, and having your body jostled around with intense physical activity can be kind of counterproductive when it's trying to digest a meal. This is a large part of why stress can be so bad for you. It keeps the sympathetic system on such high alert that necessary parasympathetic functions like autoimmune responses get neglected."
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7le8mc | Can someone please explain to me the "multiple comparisons fallacy?" | I want to understand it more thoroughly. Note: A fallacy is an error in reasoning. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"drlljzn",
"drmrrow"
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"text": [
"News reporting on science is hampered by the fact that most reporters are not trained scientists, largely because most scientists have jobs that pay more than all but a very few journalists. When there are a bunch of scientific studies, a scientist knows there are many studies. To report that in the news, reporters want to tabulate them to make their story about 1-3 things rather than many because such stories are understood by many more readers. This tabulation, though easy to understand, is often a fallacy. If reality is \"Out of N studies, A produced result X and B produced result Y.\" Tomorrow’s headlines read, “Studies show Y”.",
"If you run enough studies and ignore any negative results for correlation, eventually you will get a positive result, even if there is no correlation. The more times you try something, the more likely you are that an unlikely event occurs. Someone, somewhere in the world, has flipped a coin twenty times and had it come up heads every time. Can you draw any conclusion from looking at that result? No, because you are trying to draw conclusions from data which is biased - you have selected the data because it has a certain property, therefore you cannot study that property using that data. Really, just read xkcd: URL_0"
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7lebz5 | How can a founder of a company, like Papa John, be forced to step down from CEO | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Papa John's is a publicly traded company. This means that individuals can buy portions of the company called \"shares\" and the company can use that money to invest and grow. John Schnatter kept 25% of the company for himself when they went public, but the other 75% was sold in order to grow the brand. The shareholders are represented by a board of directors. Schnatter has a lot of power, but if they all agreed he shouldn't be CEO then they can make him. They can choose a new CEO. What they *can't* do is take away his 25% of the company. So he still owns 25% of the company. He still will make millions and millions of dollars from Papa John's. He just doesn't actually *run* the company any more.",
"just because he's the founder doesn't mean he owns majority share of the company. when he sold shares of the company to investors for money, he sold majority share away. bill gates only owns 4% of microsoft. mark zuckerberg only owns 28% of facebook. jeff bezoes only owns 17% of amazon. whoever has majority shares get majority power influence over the board. that's how you share a company with thousands of owners.",
"Public companies like Papa johns are beholden to their stockholders; often there are a board of people who own a majority of the stocks who have more power than the CEO; if they dont like what the CEO is doing they can replace him",
"The board of directors vote him out. They might do so under pressure from prominent shareholders. Ultimately, though, the board of directors determine the executive structure of the company (including voting in new board members). He's still the chairman of the board, but that doesn't mean he runs the board, so he can be voted out."
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7ledfi | Are Magnetic North and the North Star just extremely fortunate coincidences? Or could early civilizations on other planets expect such useful navigation tools? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"They're not *precisely* coincidental. The magnetic field exists because of the rotation of Earth's core, which is (more or less) rotating about the same axis that is used to define the rotation that we experience here on the surface. That same axis is what points (generally) at Polaris. Presuming other planets have significantly large magnetic fields that align with the axis of that planets rotation (in the same way ours apparently works), and if there is a star pretty close to where that axis travels out into the sky (again, in the same way that Polaris is pretty close to our axis), then yeah, they'd probably have similar things. They also potentially may have a constellation of stars that exists along that axis if no individual star is close enough to geodetic north/south. The biggest issue is that the Polaris star has to be pretty bright in order to be useful (again, this is why a constellation may end up being used instead).",
"well assuming a magnetic field is present, regardless of where it is located relative to rotation it would be useful for navigation, it would just not point 'north' on the map. so any rocky world with a magnetic field would have a north and south pole. well any type of planet i guess. and having a star directly above the rotational pole is a mix of inevitable and luck. in theory there is a star or galaxy directly above each point on earth if you look far enough, but a nebula or something might prevent it from being visible or reliable for navigation. so thats sort of case by case but in theory there is no reason to assume any given world wouldn't have a star or galaxy close enough to the pole to work as a navigation point.",
"The north star is such a coincidence that it wasn't usable for early humans like the Egyptians. They didn't have a star very close to north at that time, but luckily the earth has a wobble and now we have one pretty close."
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7ledwo | Why do skunks’ spray linger in the air for so long? | Whenever a skunk unleashes hell from its rear end, it seems to stay for days... why? Why doesn’t this happen with other smells? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Skunk spray is mainly made of up chemicals called thiols, which are structurally similar to alcohols but contain sulfur atoms. For some evolutionary reason (or accident), our noses are VERY sensitive to this class of chemicals, and most of them smell quite strongly. The smells of sweat and onions are also due to thiols, and they're added to natural gas to give that \"gas\" smell. Skunk spray can be detected in parts of about 1 per 10 billion in the air, which is very, very low."
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7leey3 | Why when you spin in circles a few times you get dizzy and can barley keep you balance waking? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Not exactly certain on this, so if someone who sounds smarter comes along they're probably right. Your body senses its own movement via liquid in the ear. So when you spin around a bit, that starts sloshing about. When you stop, it's still going for a little while, so your body is getting false signals and trying to compensate for motion that isn't happening."
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7lei5u | Why are comedy/sitcom shows often written by a team of writers, where novels and screenplays credit one or few writers. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"A screenplay is 120 minutes of content, tops. With usually months or years to get it all nailed down. A sitcom is 20-40 minutes a week, every week the show is on. That's an impossible amount of content for one person to write.",
"a sitcom has to get a new script ready to shoot every week. A novel or screenplay can take years. Having a team means you can assign one writer to work on Script X, with maybe one or two others assisting him with ideas or jokes as needed. The next week that writer is on set doing last minute edits while his script is filmed, and another writer is taking the lead on the ext Script. And the whole team has a head writer coordinating everything."
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7lejz8 | How do headphones create a sense of something being behind/in front of you, when they only play sound to the left and right of your head? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"I want to elaborate on the other answers to explain how it actually works. Your ears aren't just two holes in your ear- they have flesh that is shaped differently in each direction. As sounds come to your ear through different directions, the shape of your outer ear alters the sound (making certain frequencies change in volume by the time they hit your inner ear). Your can (sort of) reproduce this in the studio by accentuating different frequencies and affects like reverb. But placing audio in front and behind is actually a lot harder to replicate than left and right. \"Far vs near\" and \"left vs right\" can be done easily - \"forward vs backwards\" and \"up vs down\" are a lot more ambiguous.",
"Think about it this way: to us, all sound only comes from the left and the right. Our ears are incapable of individually determining the source of a sound: that's not how sound works. However, together, they can get clues: if the sound is louder in one ear, its in that direction. Similar tricks can be used for other directions, but all of those can be duplicated with just two different sounds right at the ear",
"It's all computer simulated how our ears would hear things in nature too. Ever seen a 7.1 headset somewhere? Yep, all software. You don't have more speakers in those either way (only rarely in high end ones). Our ear is shaped in such a way that the sound hits the ear canal in a different way thus giving us the impression the sound would come from behind, it's trained on your own ear form. Our ears and a headset with only left and right \"channels\" can simulate that by making sounds that are behind you more echo-y, muffled a tiny bit and appearing further away. That tricks your brain into hearing \"3D\" with just 2 speakers."
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7ler2x | What are the differences between phonemes, graphemes and visemes? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"A phoneme is a single sound. For example, the word \"dog\" has three different sounds, phonemes, one after the other. The first is a voiced alveolar stop, then comes an open back vowel, and finally a voiced velar stop. The word \"shop\" also has three phonemes: a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative, an open back vowel, and an unvoiced bilabial stop. A grapheme is basically a letter: it's the smallest unit of writing. The word \"dog\" consists of three graphemes; \"shop\" consists of four graphemes. It's important to remember that *letters* and *sounds* are completely different things: letters can *represent* sounds, but it's completely arbitrary. English is notorious for its silent letters, for example: a word like \"knight\" (six graphemes) has only three phonemes. Different graphemes can represent the same sounds (\"quick\" could be written \"kwick\"), while different sounds can be represented by the same grapheme (in the word \"styles\", the first \"s\" represents a different sound from the second \"s\"); and of course, graphemes often represent completely different sounds in different languages (the English \"j\" is pronounced very differently from the Spanish \"j\", and the Dutch pronunciation is different again). A viseme is the appearance of the mouth when making a particular sound. For example, when saying [m], we press our lips together. That's the viseme: it's what we look like when saying that sound. It's also the viseme for [p] and [b]. However, when saying [n], we keep our lips apart, so we use a different viseme. The theory is that when listening to somebody speak, we ideally want to hear the phonemes and see the visemes. For example, if you can't *see* somebody speaking and they say \"mail\", you might mistake it for \"nail\" because the phonemes sound so similar. But if you can see their face as well, you can see the viseme, so that clues you in to the fact that the word was \"mail\". Conversely, if you can't hear somebody and they say \"mail\", you might mistake it for \"pail\" because the visemes are the same. You need to hear the phonemes to tell the difference. An extreme example is the phrase \"I love you\", which has exactly the same visemes as \"elephant juice\". This has applications in real life. Lip-reading is difficult because people who are hearing-impaired can see the visemes but can't hear the phonemes: they're missing a lot of information. That's why deaf people often prefer, wherever possible, to use sign language. The speech of those born profoundly deaf has a very distinctive sound: they have all the visemes rights, but have great problems getting the phonemes exactly right. Computer speech recognition is also notoriously difficult (although it has improved a lot recently). If we could figure out a way to teach computers to recognise visemes as well as phonemes, we might get much better speech recognition systems."
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7levw1 | What's the difference between the medication Lithium and the Lithium in batteries? | What is it? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Great question. On one level, the active \"ingredient\" -- a positively charged lithium ion -- is the same, but the packaging or delivery is VERY different. A lithium battery WILL NOT be metabolized in a medicinal way, and a lithium pill will not power your phone. Medicinal lithium is in the form of lithium carbonate. The nature of this salt is such that you have two lithium ions available in a form that your body can utilize it and can tolerate its counterpart (the carbonate). Lithium in batteries also use lithium ions (from a compound like lithium cobalt oxide) but metallic lithium is also involved, and the counterparts and other battery ingredients are not bio-friendly. edited: speling eror",
"Lithium in batteries = lithium metal + lithium salt in water + other lithium chemical Lithium in medicine = a “salt,” like lithium carbonate So it seems like it might be kind of similar, right? Not exactly. (Most definitely not and **DO NOT EAT LITHIUM BATTERIES** they will not work as medicine.) The best comparison I can think of is sodium metal (so it looks like a metal, think aluminum or something; very bendy, shiny, etc.), which [catches fire when it contacts water]( URL_0 ) (bad) and sodium chloride (table salt—the salt you eat), which doesn’t catch fire and dissolved in water just fine. Lithium metal can catch fire like this too because it is very reactive (likes to react chemically with many things by losing an electron). It hates its electron. Just because two compounds (pure sodium metal/pure lithium metal and sodium salt/lithium salt) are made of similar things, does not mean they have similar properties. The reason lithium is used in batteries is because is really hates its electron. Since electrons create current (the electric current that powers electronics), this is very good. So the lithium metal in the battery gives up it’s electron to the lithium salt + other lithium compound on the other side of the battery and creates a current that can power electronics. I think it’s kind of easier to think about lithium salt as a medicine by thinking less about electrons and more about the size and shape of the lithium (ion). Lithium isn’t reactive in this situation because it already gave up its electron to be a salt. “Lithium” (the medication) is a shorthand for different lithium salts and should not be confused with lithium metal. Biological systems (like human bodies) work by how things fit. Lithium “works” as a medicine because it isn’t normally found in as high of a concentration in the body as it is when you take it as medicine. When its concentration in your body goes up, it tries to go everywhere it fits, and it fits in places it shouldn’t be. I should preface this by stating that no one really knows why lithium (ion) works as a mood stabilizer, and that it undoubtedly works on many parts of the brain, but here are examples: Lithium messes with the movement and function of calcium in the brain. Calcium is very important because it is used as the trigger to send messages between cells in the brain (amount many other functions of calcium), so messing with calcium messes with those signals. It does this by screwing with a receptor (channel; called NMDA) that allows calcium to get into cells so that it doesn’t work correctly. There it goes, trying to fit places it shouldn’t be! It also messes with an enzyme (kind of like a chemical in-out box: something goes into the enzyme, and something useful pops out) that helps 1) regulate the commands that calcium is telling the cell to do and 2) release more calcium (inositol second messenger and pathway). In both cases, when I say “Lithium shouldn’t be there,” I mean “Lithium fits there as a fluke, and the spot it binds was actually for something else.” Just because lithium is somewhere it “shouldn’t be” doesn’t mean it’s bad (in this case, it’s good, because it’s helping to stabilize mood)."
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7lf837 | Lavalamps | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"drltigh"
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"text": [
"So the bubbles are wax. There is a light bulb down at the bottom. The bulb heats the wax, causing it to melt. Melted wax is more buoyant then it was as solid wax. The buoyant melted wax floats to the top in chunks of what ever melted first. Once it gets to the top it begins to cool. When it cools it becomes less buoyant and sinks, making its way to the bottom to be heated up again and repeat the process."
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7lfczl | Why does meat change color when cooked? | I know that all color changes are caused by chemical reactions but what chemical reactions in meat cause the color to change when it is cooked? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drlup6t",
"drm3pv1"
],
"text": [
"Cooking meat denatures the protein structure of the muscle (making it softer up to a point) and it caramelizes the sugars (brown food is yummy). The caramelized sugars are what causes the color to change to brown.",
"I asked my dad this question when I was younger and he said “well lets try cooking you and see if you turn red”"
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7lfesx | Why German made items are considered high quality compared to something like made in China? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drlusk8"
],
"text": [
"china is where big companies generally put their mass production chains, because of the super cheap labor. If its made in germany theres probably a little more money put into the production"
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5
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7lfyrk | why do pastries go bad (soggy/gross) when left in closed Tupperware containers but not in a box (not air tight)? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drlzznc"
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"text": [
"Pastries sweat and put out moisture (for a variety of reasons that I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure on), especially when they're cooling down. By leaving them in a box, this moisture can escape but an airtight container can't let it do that, so the moisture winds up staying on the pastry and makes it go soggy. If you let them cool completely first, they should hopefully be alright, that's definitely the main way that things sweat."
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7lg31c | How and why are dental work and heart health related. | I have a congenital heart defect and have to take antibiotics anytime I get work done on my teeth. Also my cardiologist stresses that I see a dentist at least every 6 months. Just curious about the correlation between the two areas of the body. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drm1h64",
"drm6a56"
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"text": [
"Basically the reason you must take prophylactic antibiotics is because your oral flora (aka mouth bacteria) are able to enter your blood and eventually your heart during dental work. This is simply due to tissue damage that your dentist causes during cleaning. Certain bacteria such as streptococcus Viridans are able to colonize damaged heart valves or in your case a congenital heart defects. This can lead to a myriad of dangerous consequences.",
"You didn't quite get a \"full\" answer so I'll try to fill in the blanks. If you have a congenital heart valve defect, blood doesn't flow smoothly through that area. It might get a little turbulent and slow down as it passes through the heart. This means that bacteria which manage to enter your blood can easily get \"caught\" and start to build up on the damaged valve. This is an even greater risk if that defect has been surgically correct with a mechanical valve. Mechanical valves lack the natural antibiotic properties of heart tissue, and aren't conveniently accessed by the immune system. Dental work is an easy way to get bacteria in your blood. It's on your teeth, and your teeth get picked at, sometimes until your gums bleed -- producing open routes to the bloodstream. Furthermore, the particular bacteria (strep viridans) is great at surviving within the heart if given the opportunity. This is a risk for all of us, but far less so than those with valve defects and mechanical valves. That particular bacteria poses no major threat to healthy hearts, but you can bet your bottom dollar that it'll cause problems in someone like yourself. The actual \"problem\" you're at risk of is bacteremia and sepsis, which is an uncontrollable amount of bacteria in the blood. This happens because the bacteria from your mouth finds a foothold on the valve, where it can multiple and continuously seed more and more bacteria into the blood. Your immune system will go crazy, triggering changes throughout your body -- namely your cardiovascular system. Your heart rate and blood pressure will adjust to compensate, but eventually it won't be enough and will \"decompensate\" potentially fatally in the opposite direction. I hope this answer was useful."
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7lgjr3 | How can an organism survive solely on blood? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drm3hfu"
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"text": [
"Generally speaking blood contains more nutrients than meat but less than the internal organs. The creatures that live of blood alone like any carnivore make the vitamins they need but do not get from their food. For example a cat can make C vitamins, but are not able to produce taurine, which makes sense as cats do not eat fruits, but will eat spiders and other bugs. Humans are the reverse, We need fruit to get C vitamins but luckily we produce taurine so our diet does not need to contain spiders and so on."
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7lgpdj | What is a government bond? | I can't seem to get it for some reason. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drm35qe",
"drm34j1"
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"text": [
"You give the Canadian government some money upfront, say $1000. The government will return this face value to you upon maturity (say 10 years). Until then, the government will also give you semi annual payments called coupon payments. So total cash flow to you looks like: You net zero on the $1000 (you give it to the government initially, and then they give you it back upon maturity) All the semi annual coupon payments you get from the government. Probably around $10-30 or something around there. Government bonds are considered risk free, because technically the government can print more money in order to pay you back.",
"It is a loan that the Federal or State government gives to a local government for a specific project. Repairing roads, building schools, establishing a city park, etc. The local government gets the money now to do the project then pays it down over time rather than having to wait that amount of time to save for the project (which will make whatever issue they are trying to correct worse). Edit: You can also have the Federal Government give a bond to a State Government. Edit2: Treasury bonds, which you might be thinking are Government bonds, are a point of investment. You buy them at a set rate of interest for a set period of time. During that time the money you gave the government is used to fund their various activities and then they pay you back with the interest when the bond matures."
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7lgr3b | Why does popular software like Spotify, Firefox or Google Chrome have very small (less than 1 megabyte) installer files when all they do is download larger amounts of data immediately after starting? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you develop a popular software, you'll constently improve features and correct bugs (much more demand than for an obscure release). As mainly your software will be distributed through various hosting sites (good to reach a wider audiance), if you release often a full package, you'll have to updates many sites. Having a download that would not change (he only download a file), mean that when you release a new version on your home server, you don't have to upadte any site, as the downloader will take the source from only one location.",
"The small installer can look at the current state of your machine and download just the parts that your machine needs and doesn't already have.",
"Basically, that tiny installer gets to be somewhat smart about what to install and how: * It can call the right places to check what the latest version of the software is and download that at install time. With an offline installer, you download and install a potentially out-of-date version, then go and download and update the new version just as with the smaller installer. This is a waste of resources. * The installer can be validate each file it's downloading and re-download only that if it detects errors, instead of just detecting that the whole offline installer is damaged and asking you to download the whole thing again. * It can download things more efficiently (for some definition thereof). For example, several of these installers for games use BitTorrent or similar systems to download from many sources at once. Alternatively, it can choose an appropriate mirror to download from, as it's both cheaper and faster to download stuff from servers geographically close to you (though this is less of a problem now that CDNs are in wide use) (EDIT: fix typos and bullets)"
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7lgz4p | Why do squirrels only seem to want to cross the road right as I drive close to them? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drm5zux",
"drm62fv"
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"text": [
"What you're experiencing is something called \"frequency illusion\". Firstly the squirrels are running across the road all the time when you aren't there. Secondly you've become tuned in to look for them. If you were 5 I'd tell you, they are always running across the road but you just notice them because they are cute and you are looking for them.",
"Two possibilities that I can think of: - they cross the road all the time, but you only see them or notice when you are close. - maybe their brain/instincts cannot estimate car speeds well; they evolved to ditch slower, legged animals on the ground and fast flying animals; they see the car at a distance, but don't see it as a threat. Then suddenly the car is close and they go \"crap! it's coming at me!!\", as they don't realize you just want to stay on the road and are not a squirrel eating behemoth. In this situation, their instinct is to outrun/out-make-fast-turns the predator. Believing you are charging towards them, they cross the road to escape (and in a natural situation maybe start zig-zaging to ditch you). Starting to run when you are closer makes it harder for you to change your direction (if you were a heavy predator) TLDR; they believe you are charging at them and start an evasive routine."
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7lhxqx | Why does adding salt to a salty food (say, sausage) make it too salty, but combining a salty food like sausage with another salty food like cheese taste good? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drmbl9q"
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"text": [
"Taste is a degree of concentration. Its amount of thing over mass of thing. So by adding more food you keep the concentration about the same, but if you just add salt you are raising the concentration quite a lot. Dose makes the poison."
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6
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7li0hv | Why can sphincter muscles stay clenched/tense pretty much all the time, but other muscles need to be relaxed for usually a long period of time? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drmdip2"
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"text": [
"Other way round. The relaxed state of a sphincter is \"closed\". You have to \"tense\" muscles to get them to *open*. Sure, you can tense them in the opposite direction to close them righter, but that's a different matter."
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7lio8l | What is the strategy behind repeating a person’s name when talking to them? | I’ve recently been shopping for a car, and when talking to the car salesman, I couldn’t help but notice that he kept saying my name when talking to me. I also remember hearing this type of dialogue when watching a video of an illusionist play a trick on someone, I’m assuming they are trying to distract their brain without realizing. Is there a specific strategy to this? Or is it just how the man talks? If so, how does it work? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drmhrgc",
"drmtdl0",
"drn46m6",
"drmp1vu"
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"text": [
"He's trying to build a familiarity with you so that you'll trust him, Les. See, Les, you're not just another sale to me. Les, those guys are just guys, but you, you're Les. I want to get you into a car that is just right for you, Les, not anybody else. Not Bob, not Carl, but Les, you. By repeating your name, he builds a familiarity with you like your friends do when they talk to you. It's designed to make you feel at home, comfortable and like he's taking a real interest in who you are. One of my favorite things to do is constantly correct salesmen to a different name throughout the sale. It really throws off their game.",
"Dale Carnegie Principle #6: \"Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.\" But for me, I find it annoying to hear my name over and over.",
"The name repeat is a trick to build rapport, but also in my case, since I am no longer selling anything, it is merely a memory enhancer. It is easier to remember something you have heard if you also say the words. Normally I forget someone's name in less than five seconds after being introduced, By repeating it, I can easily remember it for over ten seconds.",
"It's also a priming technique. We tend to like the sound of our names - it makes us more receptive when we hear it."
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7litb3 | Is there an upper level of calories that a human can absorb in a day? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drmn7n9",
"drmphwk"
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"text": [
"Pretty sure the calories part doesn't matter, it's the speed that your stomach can produce stomach acid that is the actual limit.",
"Slightly tangential, but Shadows on The Wasteland by Ranalph Fiennes might interest you. His partner Mike Stroud is a doctor who used the expedition to conduct a detailed scientific experiment into calorie consumption in the completely controlled conditions of the artic. The answer very nearly killed them both. They found that extreme physical exertion pushed their calorie consumption above 10,000 a day and their rations (basically a near solid fat based diet called pemmican) were inadequate. Their weight loss was incredible. Very interesting and a damn good read."
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7litt0 | why does one get heartburn after eating specific food? | My father gets heartburns from eating bananas while I get them after eating blueberries. Is there a reason behind why we get them from eating these specific foods while others may not? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drmr6ne"
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"text": [
"From what I understand, each body, while very similar, contains moderately different ratios of stomach acid. Some things offset certain balances resulting in heart burn."
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7lizre | The reason some countries sell milk in a bag, and other countries sell it in a box | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drmnyme",
"drmqsw3"
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"text": [
"In my country there are 3 options. Carton Box (tetra brik), Plastic Bag (sachet) and plastic Bottle. Plastic bag is cheaper Tetra brik is average The bottle is expensive or \"premium\" Edit 1: I assume is the manufacturing cost or something cultural",
"Bags are cheap to produce but some people perceive them as \"weird\" or dirty, possibly legitimate (they're hard to reseal and pour without liquid touching the outside of the bag) and possibly because they are not used to them. The cost of the packaging is less important anyways, as the cost of land, water, electricity, labor, and transport to produce and get the milk increase. This makes it less likely that an American, for example, will see a *meaningful* benefit to milk in a bag and are more likely to focus on the negative aspects."
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7lj1r0 | Why is there more friction against wet skin than dry? | ie: why is it harder to put clothes on when your skin's still damp, etc. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drmkpn6"
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"text": [
"Because our skin is normally covered by a thin layer of oil, which is a much better lubricant than water. Water's actually a pretty poor lubricant, as far as these things go. It tends to adhere to things (it's kind of sticky)."
],
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9
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7lj3ej | Why do toilets use fresh, drinkable water instead of water from undeniable sources such as the ocean or lakes? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drml40d",
"drml4va",
"drmli7k",
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"drmlk7h"
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"text": [
"Because it would require an entirely separate water supply network which we don't have. Additionally, salt water is much more corrosive than drinking water, so it will be harder to maintain.",
"Logistics Supplying drinking water ***and*** utility water to every household, business, etc would take twice the resources (plumbing, maintenance, etc) . While what you're suggesting makes a certain sense, it would just be so much more expensive to implement than the current system of \"everything in is good, everything out is bad\"",
"The biggest problem is that you'd need a whole means of getting non-treated water into the toilet - and it can't use the same pipes as regular water, or it'll contaminate it. So using clean water means that we only need one set of pipes going into every house, which is a plus. Many areas use what's called \"greywater\" for toilets - basically, any water coming from the sinks or showers, laundry machines, etc. It's not drinkable any more, but it's not going to spread disease. Instead of running into the sewer, some of the greywater will be used for toilet flushes, at which point it's considered blackwater and goes straight to sewers, waste processing, etc.",
"I’m not an expert, but I would guess that you would need to run a separate line from the other water source into each and every home, costing twice as much and using twice the resources for building pipelines just to flush a toilet. Edit: possibly using gray water, say from each home’s shower, would be a viable solution.",
"In some cities reclaimed water is on the rise. Wastewater is treated at the plant and some of it is pumped back to (mostly) commercial customers in a separate pipe network. The pipes are colored purple to distinguish them from drinking water. The reclaimed water is often used for toilet flushing and irrigation but can also be used for car washing etc. (ie. non-potable uses)."
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7lj76k | If I'm pulling 100 Mb/s why are my progress bars and % completion not jumping 100 Mb/s? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drmm59x",
"drmmmz1"
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"text": [
"Just because your connection is capable of receiving 100mb/s doesn't mean the sender is sending 100mb/s. Internet traffic speeds depend on every network device between you and the sender that you share with millions of other users.",
"It is good to realize, that Internet traffic contains lots of framing. Data is split into small packages which have address and othe info, and then a piece of the data that is being sent. This increases the overall amount of data a lot. So even if you'd receive 100 Mb/s, a lot of that is just extra data used for delivering. Also, keep in mind that 100 Mb/s is 8 times less than 100 MB/s. Network speed is measured in bits, not Bytes. When considering the progress bars, if data would just be transferred, that would be the case. But there might be some extra processing for the data. How ever, I don't know the context of what you are asking."
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7ljh1r | Does getting sick with the flu once provide the same effect as the flu shot for that year? | Basically, if someone got sick with the flu once already this year and then got it again a month later. Does that first flu provide the same immunity effects against the second flu that a flu shot would have? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Kind of. You'll get immunity to that *particular* strain, but the flu shot typically contains vaccines against a few different strains. As such, you could still catch one of the other common strains that are going around, which the vaccine would have protected you against. Not all strains that go around are protected against by the vaccine, as sometimes the epidemiologists get it a bit wrong and chose the wrong strains. This is why having the flu shot doesn't guarantee that you won't then get the flu. Still, as the flu is horrible, it's worth getting the shot. They're cheap (or even free for many), virtually painless, won't give you the flu (you either already had the virus, or you've got a strain that isn't protected against). Definitely worth having. The flu can be particularly bad if you have certain medical conditions, like asthma, COPD, or anything that leaves your immunocompromised (amongst many others).",
"Yes for that particular mutation of the flu but the flu mutates rapidly which is why you have to get flu shots every year and even then you can run into mutations that the flu shot didn't vaccinate against. Same as the common cold, you never get the exact same common cold twice.",
"The other answers are correct, but I would like to point out a common misconception here, too. The stomach flu is not the same as influenza. Usually the stomach flu is caused by a type of virus like norovirus and causes the usual nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, etc. It can cause issues with dehydration or electrolytes, but it's also pretty short lived. Influenza virus infects the respiratory tract causing things like cough, fever and severe fatigue. It lasts 1-2 weeks (sometimes longer) and can cause serious complications, like pneumonia. This is what the vaccine is for, influenza and its complications can be fatal.",
"Generally yes: people won't get the flu twice in once season. Influenza is a virus, and our bodies create antibodies that identify viruses and allow them to be destroyed. Once our bodies have seen that virus before, it can usually fight it off again without getting sick. Vaccines are crippled versions of viruses that basically allow our immune system to \"train\" itself on something that won't make it sick. So be it from getting the flu, or getting a vaccine, your body will fight off future occurrences... ...Or that's how our bodies wish it worked. Influenza is a sneaky bugger, and mutates every year. Of the many strains floating around, scientists try to predict what strains will be predominant each flu season, and formulate their vaccine to match. Sometimes it's a good prediction, sometimes not. That's why each year the flu vaccine works to varying degrees (sometimes it's protecting you against strains that aren't circulating much). Because of *that*, getting the flu, the strain actually going around that season, will often give you better protection from getting the flu *again that same season*, than the protection you get from a vaccine that year. It's also why you need a new vaccine each year, that (hopefully) targets the predominant strains that season.",
"Well. You absolutely cannot get a recurring infection from the same circulating type in under a year without an extenuating circumstance; the memory B cells would be stoked against that serotype 7 days from infection and for years to come. You will get very potent pan-type protection via cellular CD4/CD8 pathways, but that immunity is negligible after about 6 weeks. So a month after an infection from one of the below flu viruses you're vulnerable to infection from another type, surely. The fleeting T-cell response and residual innate infiltration may significantly handicap the second viral infection. If the virus came along 2 months later it would infect as if the first hadn't of been there, so long as it isn't the same type. 4x 2017 Types: > * A/Michigan/45/2015 (H1N1)pdm09-like > * A/Hong Kong/4801/2014 (H3N2)-like > * B/Brisbane/60/2008-like (B/Victoria lineage) > * B/Phuket/3073/2013-like (B/Yamagata lineage) As for potency, the flu vaccine doesn't agitate the immune system enough to provide protection for more than a year. What it does accomplish it does so via humoral pathways, so it lasts about 9 times longer. Different mechanisms. Since the season is almost 6 months long, the powerful but fleeting CD4/CD8 protection is disregarded in prevention efforts."
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7ljhve | Why does white noise calm people down? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When it's quiet, your body reacts to every noise with a \"what's that?\" response which makes you perk up and be alert. By drowning out the sounds with white noise, you don't have that effect as often and your body has a chance to relax.",
"It distracts us from our own internal dialogue, which can be a little overwhelming after a while",
"I have a white noise app that I run through a speaker when I sleep. The main draw to this app was the fact you could build your own mix from sounds other people uploaded including odd, but still soothing, sounds. You find out that people have different tastes in \"soothing\". The one that I can give an example of myself is a PC running with the fans on. This is mainly because I ran my computer 24/7 in the same room I slept in for two years (dorms) that even then if had the option to not sleep in the same room, I would move it into my room. From the type of sounds I am about to list, some I could not sleep to but they all have at least one of the qualities I think are critical to a good sleep noise: personal familiarity(forced to sleep in), constant, soft regular beat comparatively to main noise (no bongo drums by themselves), droning, and perfected looping (the ones you could detect where the clip's end was KEPT you up and from other people's feedback, it was very noticable and downvoted because of the defect). -Urban city : people talking, loud taxis beeps, etc -Windchimes : Random dings. Some made with built in rain -Rains of various quantities - From a sprinkle to a downpour on a car roof. -Appliances - Clothes dryers, washers, dishwashers, and air conditioners, windows fans. One major similarity between them all is they all try to muffle the sound they generate to some degree. -Vehicles - Trains, random motorcycles. I can see the train thing working because I used to live in a small town that had a train whistle far in the distance because it was approaching another town.",
"I like to think of it as a sonic curtain between you and the rest of the world. The nature of white noise* is that it fills up the whole range of sound, so every other sound is blocked out a little by...well, essentially nothing. It gives us a chance to retreat into our own little worlds a little bit. *in my experience, “pink” or “brown” noise is actually slightly better. White noise involves the whole spectrum equally but other “shades” can fill up certain parts of the spectrum more than others. It’s been my experience that these other shades are better suited to actual life, where white noise is more a laboratory thing.",
"The \"shhhhhh\" sound is very close to white noise. It supposedly replicates the womb sounds which we associate with warm comfortable, safe, hence a good place to sleep.",
"As a new father, we use white noise to help put the baby to sleep. I'm told that the womb is actually a fairly loud place, with constant breathing & pulsations. I imagine that this subconscious feeling of womb-like comfort continues into adulthood.",
"I grew up in the Midwest on the wrong side of the tracks--we were too poor for AC, so we used box fans and such throughout the house. The drone is soporific, it lulls you to sleep. Several of my siblings, as well as myself, use fans to this day to get to sleep. I know a lot of people in the same boat. You can buy a fancy white noise generator, or you can buy a cheap box fan. I will say that when I lived in the Colorado high country, I spent a summer and fall living in a log cabin next to a small stream cascading down from a mountain gully above the cabin. That sang me to sleep at night, it was the best."
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7ljx1x | In relation to Physics, how is it possible for something to "only exist when measured"? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In quantum mechanics we often say that something only has value when measured or that the value only exists when measured. This is because in quantum mechanics we know that particles are also waves. As an analogy, consider a wave of water crashing on the beach. If I ask you to mark where that wave crashed, you can draw a line in the sand which marks the middle of where the wave hit the beach. That would accurately tell me where it hit, but would miss some of the picture. So maybe you draw a box around the edges of where the crest of the wave looked like it hit the beach. That would also be pretty accurate, but it would also miss some of the picture because the wave was interacting with other waves. Eventually you would either have to tell me it hit the whole beach, or choose some method that you thought was good enough to tell me where it hit. Nearly every measurable trait of a particle behaves the same way (especially traits that can change easily like position and momentum). You can measure it, and get an answer that you're pretty sure describes it, but when you're not measuring the particle it doesn't have that exact value, it is a wave that has many values at once one of which is that value."
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7ljx8f | Why do candles flicker even if there is no moving air in the room they are standing in? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"because there is moving air. the candle flame itself creates heat that heats up the air immediately touching the flame and moves it.",
"The flickering can be attributed to the source of fuel and its delivery to the flame. Meaning in simpler terms. The wax is the fuel and it is not getting to the flame evenly. So at times the flame gets a lot of wax and times where it doesn't. Causing the flame to get bigger and smaller. Things like impurities in the wax or the way it flows up the wick or even how long the wick is can cause the wax to get delivered in an uneven way."
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7lk584 | What is GAP insurance? Why is it an option on my Lease agreement but not my auto insurance? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Since new cars depreciate quickly at first, there will usually be a period when your car is worth less than the outstanding amount you owe. Gap insurance covers you for that gap in value if your car is written off and your insurance doesn't pay out enough to clear the finance. It's not a bad idea to have it, but it's likely that a policy offered through the lease company will be quite expensive. If you want the cover, it's worth checking whether you can get it more cheaply elsewhere.",
"the car is sold to you for $25,000 (the purchase price). you take out a bank loan for $25,000 the second you drive it off the lot, it's now only worth $23,000 because it's now a used car. your loan is using a $23,000 collateral against a $25,000 balance. if you crash the car the instant you get out of the lot, insurance is only going to give you $23,000 for it. you're now paying for loan with no usable car. the bank wants $25,000 to close the loan. gap insurance is for the difference between loan balance and vehicle value, aka the gap."
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7lk6qf | What Does It Mean To Have A God Complex? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Schizophrenics often think that they are responsible for everything happening to them and around them. They think they are willing the sun across the sky and controlling other people's behavior as well. It's similar to solipsism I think. Or did you mean a Messiah complex? Because that's a different thing altogether.",
"Somebody with a God complex believes that they never make a mistake, and that they are the best at whatever they do. Even when you prove to them that they made a mistake, they just won't believe you. It's not a medical term, so there's not really a precise and exact definition. But if you're dealing with somebody who always thinks they're right all of the time, are better than anyone else, and think they deserve special privileges while not caring about anyone else's rights, you could say they have a God complex.",
"It simply means that the person with the God complex thinks they're the best either at everything or within the context of the complex. People with high ranking positions may show signs of having god complexes like doctors, surgeons, police officers ect From Wikipedia A person with a god complex may refuse to admit the possibility of their error or failure, even in the face of irrefutable evidence, intractable problems or difficult or impossible tasks. The person is also highly dogmatic in their views, meaning the person speaks of their personal opinions as though they were unquestionably correct.[1] Someone with a god complex may exhibit no regard for the conventions and demands of society, and may request special consideration or privileges.[1] God complex is not a clinical term or diagnosable disorder and does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The first person to use the term god-complex was Ernest Jones (1913–51).[2] His description, at least in the contents page of Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis, describes the god complex as belief that one is a god.[3]"
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7lk6yo | Why do car windows get a grid pattern on them | So what I mean is, I’ve noticed on some rear windscreens what looks like squares of condensation in between the heating elements of the back window. Naturally I assumed it was because of those heating elements, however I also get in on my side windows too when I’ve had the heating on. What cause it | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Whenever the glass is rapidly cooled during the tempering process there are these air jets that blow cool air on the glass. This creates distortions in the glass that are almost invisible, until you put on polarized glasses. Different automakers have different (patented) patterns or cooling methods to reduce this distortion.",
"Tempered glass has stressors built-in. You can see them with polarized sunglasses. The built-in stress is what causes the window to completely shatter into small pieces when the window is damaged in any way. Even a scratch may cause enough damage to shatter the window."
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7lkbq5 | Why are little metal disks and paper rectangles used for money in basically every country? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the beginning, we had trade. A farmer could trade milk from his cow to another farmer for eggs from the chickens. This is all well and good until that cow farmer wants to buy blankets from a weaver who wants eggs - he then needs to find eggs before he can get the blanket. Even worse, if that crafter wants *a single steak*, you can't just cut one piece off without killing the whole cow and you can't keep the beef around very long without refrigeration. To solve this problem, you find something that everyone wants because it can be traded for milk, eggs, beef & blankets. This happened in many societies around the world and it generally ended up being formalized as \"money\" with coins made out of precious metals. When you remember that the value of money used to be based on trading precious metals (gold, silver, etc), the advent of the coin seems pretty obvious. It's a standardized quantity of the metal with markings on it that show it's from a source that can be trusted on size & purity. Paper's a bit more difficult but, the basic idea is that it's an IOU for some quantity of those same coins at a later date - again from a source that can be trusted to keep their word. Metal coins are heavy and bulky, especially in large quantities, so having a slip of paper that is easier to handle as a proxy is clearly desirable. The transition from those basic ideas to where we are today with fiat currency is a bit trickier but the basic concepts should be easy to understand.",
"These things are easy to make, easy to carry, easy to recognize, small, lightweight, hard to counterfeit cheaply, ... Thousands of years of experiments with other things have given us the best solution so far proposed. Certainly a lot better than those Bitcoins that lost almost half their value this week."
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7lkcqe | How do toy/food businesses determine the age restrictions for children on their products? | Example: A pack of peanuts I have says to not give to children under 4. How do they determine this? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Within the US, there's what's called the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission that administers the Federal Hazardous Substances Act. The CPSC publishes toy safety guidelines and definitions. You can see an example of the guidelines from 2002, I don't know if there's a newer version or not: URL_0 There's also the Child Safety Protection Act which requires the choking-hazard warning label and bans certain toys for children 3 years and younger if they pose a choking or ingestion hazard. And the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act which amends the FHSA to require choking-hazard warnings on websites, advertisements, etc. As far as food specifically, there does not (as of 2014) appear to be any federally mandated requirement for choking hazard labels on food - that seems to be a thing some companies are doing voluntarily."
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7lkfru | How does the body separates water from stomach acid? | When we drink water does it just mix in with the stomach acid, or what? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes, when you drink water it just mixes in with the stomach acid. You can think of stomach acid as regular old water that has tiny little lightning bolts floating around in it. These tiny lightning bolts go around blowing apart the food that you eat into tinier and tinier pieces. Your stomach is protected by a layer of snot so that it doesn't get blown up. Eventually the food specks are so tiny that they can be absorbed right into your blood. The food slurry is then sucked into your intestine. The intestine has less snot to protect it, so your liver releases a special lightning-absorbing liquid that makes all the bolts strike out at once, producing a safe, nutritious slurry that's ready for further breakdown and absorption. After all of the nutrients are absorbed, your intestine then absorbs all of the safe lightning-free water and recycles it. For the non-ELI5: lightning = HCl, snot = mucus, food slurry = chyme, and lightning-absorbing liquid = bile",
"It is slightly absorbed by the mouth and esophagus (throat) through tiny holes, but the majority falls into your stomach. The stomach also has a small amount of these holes which also allows excess water to move, depending on the acidity level. The newly diluted acid then travels down to your intestine (duodenum) to become neutralized (turned into salt + Water), and to be recycled back into the system. A large portion of water is then absorbed in the small and large intestines, where it enters our blood and liver.",
"It just mix in the stomach. We can produce more acid if it is need to get more acidic or bicarbonate to get less acidic. The contents of the stomach get neutralized with bicarbonate when it leves the stomach in the duodenum so it is neutral in the rest of the intestine .",
"Yes, it mixes in the stomach and is emptied into the small intestines, where the acid is neutralized with bicarbonate from the pancreas. The stomach constantly makes new acid and shoves whatever is in it into the intestines.",
"Despite what it sometimes feels like, you don't walk around with large amounts of acid just sloshing around in your stomach. Instead, a special type of cell found in the stomach lining produces acid (H+ ions, i.e. protons), as you need it. Some people have a problem where they produce too much acid and/or produce acid all the time. That's what you use drugs like Nexium - they are called proton pump inhibitors and they do what the name suggests - suppress excess acid production. But yes, the water you drink will mix with any acid present, which is no big deal. When you need more, more will be produced. When whatever it is leaves the stomach and travels to the intestine, your body produces a compound(s) that will neutralise the acid so it won't burn your poop chute."
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7ll4qh | If elementary particles like quarks are the smallest units in our universe, why is the Planck length so much smaller? Why is it even practical? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not a question of particle size, but of smallest meaningful *distinction between two points in space.* Ahoy, matey! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Why is a Planck length the smallest possible unit of measurement? ]( URL_1 ) ^(_33 comments_) 1. [ELI5: What is the Planck Length? ]( URL_5 ) ^(_4 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why can there be no length shorter than the planck length? ]( URL_2 ) ^(_20 comments_) 1. [ELI5 Planck Length ]( URL_3 ) ^(_16 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Planck length. Why is it the smallest unit of length? Can't you just divide 1.61619926 × 10-35 meters and get a smaller number? ]( URL_7 ) ^(_6 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why is there a minimum possible size? (Planck Length)? ]( URL_4 ) ^(_7 comments_) 1. [ELI5:The Planck Length ]( URL_0 ) ^(_4 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why does there have to be a planck length? ]( URL_6 ) ^(_3 comments_)"
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7lldsh | is there a speed limit on how fast a human can run? and if there is, does that mean its impossible to run faster? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[These folks]( URL_0 ) say it's about 40 mph. They showed that it's not force-of-impact that limits us from going faster, but how quickly we can actually move our limbs. 40 mph is what they get taking into account the speed with which human muscle fiber can contract and what a hypothetical \"perfect\" set of muscles could do."
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7llkjz | Why is it when we choke on our food our eyes start watering? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So two reasons really. One is that you have a nerve that is important for maintaining what we call a \"patent airway\" meaning keeping your breathing hole open and able to breathe through. The airway is the most important part of assessing a patient in the \"A to E\" assessment. This is because, without a functioning airway, you will die very quickly. Anyway, this nerve, called the laryngeal nerve, also controls function such as secretion of fluids around the neck/airway area. When the airway is blocked, your body responds (via this nerve) by increasing saliva/secretion output as a way to naturally lubricate the area and hopefully allow the dislodging of the object you're choking on. However, this process also causes a release in other fluids such as eye watering. This is partly why the eyes water. The second reason is that the eyes are connected to the throat via little tubes. These tubes usually allow the drainage of eye water through them into the throat so that the water causes no issues. However, when you choke, you cough and sputter and increase pressure around the eyes/throat. This causes the water to stay in the eye instead of being able to drain as the pressure is too high for the water to flow into the throat. As a result, not only is more water produced in the eye but you also can't drain the water as well as normal. Hope this helped :)",
"Whilst you salivate more to cough up whatever you're choking on you also produce more tears from your tear ducts. These would normally drain but they're getting forced out with the pressure from the coughing, maybe yours lasted longer because you have overactive tear ducts?",
"Is that same nerve the reason why we get s lump in our throats before we cry? That nerve is getting to go nuts???"
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7lls16 | How does the satellite business work? How do the small telecom companies get access to satellites that costed millions to get into orbit? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So, now the real answer There’s a lot of satellites up there with a lot of capacity. It’s a very mature industry and capacity is always available. There’s actually a lot more space than the sat owners can sell at market rates. Space/capacity on the satellites are leased out to other companies. It’s actually not that expensive. In fact tons and tons of companies big and small lease space on the various satellites up there. This is standard procedure. You can even pay companies to do all your uplink and downlink too, and again, this is quite mature industry and totally normal and reasonably priced. Nearly every company that isn’t a satellite company just leases space and pays someone else to deal with the uplink and technical stuff. Actually launching a satellite? Well, unless you’re literally a satellite company, you don’t need as much space as you put onto a satellite, so it’s kinda a waste, you’d just have to rent out the rest of it. Instead you just lease space on someone else’s sat. Think about it like you building an apartment building vs renting an apartment in the building",
"Hello, I worked at a satellite operator for some years, so I should hopefully be able to answer this :) Satellite operators (people like Eutelsat, SES, etc.) are the people who will take a big loan of hundreds of millions of £s/$s and order a satellite from a satellite manufacturer (such as Airbus Defence and Space, Thales, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc.). The operators will also pay for the launch vehicle (provided by Arianespace, Krunichev, SpaceX, etc.)… depending on how big the satellite is they either have to buy the whole rocket, or maybe they can split the cost with another operator… but the big telecom satellites usually take up a whole rocket. Fast-forward 2-3 years: the satellite the operator ordered has been manufactured, tested and launched into space. After launch there is a period of time where the satellite operators will manoeuvre the satellite to its correct position: for telecom satellites this is usually somewhere in the geostationary arc, an orbit with an altitude of 35,786 km, which allows the satellite to orbit with just the right velocity, such that from the POV of someone looking up at it from the Earth, it seems to stay stationary. Once the satellite arrives at its “slot” there will be a period of commissioning where they test all the various systems and ensure nothing broke during launch! Commissioning usually takes a couple of weeks. THEN! They’re up and running! The satellite and the launch cost hundreds of millions, and GEO satellites usually only last 15-20 years before starting to malfunction / running out of fuel and requiring them to be “retired”. So the operators have got to sell the services and make their money back plus profit before this expensive asset fully depreciates. You asked about telecom satellites, so I’m going to assume this satellite is one which can provide two-way data services, i.e. internet for Bob in Mount Everest, who has a special dish on his house. How do they do this? Well the satellite operator has not only gone and bought a satellite and a launch vehicle, but they also have a “gateway” (aka \"teleport\") – a massive dish on the Earth that is very close to an internet exchange / has fibre-optic lossless connections to an internet exchange. The gateway also has fancy modems called “hubs”. Using the TCP/IP protocol, desired data is routed from the web to the hub, but it must then be somehow sent to the satellite, for subsequent retransmission to Bob in Mount Everest who is waiting to receive his data via his small dish and modem. How is this done? Well the data is “modulated” onto RF spectrum! Don’t want to get too technical… but you basically encode 0s and 1s onto a RF wave by altering the “phase” and/or “amplitude” of the wave… There are actually rules for this (see DVB-S2 or DVB-S2X). Anyway, the data has been modulated onto a physical signal, and the big dish on the gateway transmits that towards the satellite. The satellite receives the signal, sends it to some electronics that changes the frequency (because you can only use certain frequencies for Earth-to-Space link and different ones for Space-to-Earth links) then amplifies the signal and retransmits it. This chain of electronics on the spacecraft, this ability to receive a signal and retransmit… is called a “transponder”….. and this is where the operators make their money. There is a relationship between how much data in a given time period is required to be sent (i.e. Mbps), and how much spectrum is required to achieve this. Transponders on the spacecraft are defined by chunks of spectrum (36 or 54 MHz wide chunks most commonly). What happens is small ISPs, usually dedicated to providing internet to rural areas, will lease a certain number of transponders (or a portion of a transponder), and when they do that, the operator will also ensure they sort out access for the ISP at their gateway (i.e. allow the ISP's router in the exchange to talk with their own routers in the exchange, which in turn link back to the hubs in the operator's gateway, and also configure their hubs to send the ISP's data to the spacecraft). Operators can also provide to the ISP the dishes that the ISP’s customer will need, acting as a wholesaler effectively. And that how it works! ISP sells Bob in Mount Everest a small dish and modem. Bob pays lots of money for a capped link (capped down and up) and gets pretty constant coverage (pending extreme weather.. maybe Mount Everest wasn’t such a good example!). The ISP has leased capacity (transponders) off a satellite which is owned by a satellite operator. The transponders have coverage over Mount Everst. The ISP pays $/MHz/month usually, and the more Mbps they need, the more MHz (i.e. transponders) they need to lease. This explains the \"forward\" link, namely Bob downloading something. But the same thing happens for the \"return\" link (Bob uploading something / requesting data from a web page).. just in reserve.. Bob's computer requests data, this is sent to Bob's modem, which modulates the data onto an RF wave which is subsequently transmitted by Bob's dish. The satellite receives this, changes the frequency of the signal, amplifies and retransmits towards the gateway. Gateway receives, demodulates and hooks into the web at the internet exchange.. the satellite is almost transparent, except for the increase in latency. TLDR; satellite operators buy, own, launch and operate satellites. ISPs lease capacity on these satellites and use it to provide data to their own customers. ISPs make money from customers, operators make money from ISPs. Edit: corrected some rogue apostrophes.. and just wanted to say thanks for the Reddit gold! Edit2: added a final paragraph to talk about the return link, added a TLDR, and made minor edits/spelling corrections",
"npr answered this question recently in a great 4 part podcast [here]( URL_0 ). Essentially everyone and their mother is trying to put a satellite in space which creates lots of competing companies trying to do it with the best cost to risk ratio. That, combined with the development of \"small tech\" (think smart phones), made satellites compact and efficient rather then massive and expensive. Got a couple hundred thousand dollars lying around? You could have your own spy satellite. Also any small telecom company is relatively large compared to most small business. They're bound to have at least a few million in capital. They could negotiate deals to use existing satellites or send their own.",
"Imagine a stage surrounded by a huge stadium, with famous singers from several different countries all there on stage and singing to the audience. The audience, while all mixed together, can hear exactly who they want through magic earphones. The stage is like a satellite chasis, and the singers are what we call the 'payload' (because it pays the bills har!). It's the part of the satellite that broadcasts down to earth some useful service. The payload can service a HUGE number of people, several different countries or half the planet sometimes, and for decades in some cases, so it's like the stadium will constantly sell tickets to a lot of people for a long time to fund the initial cost of getting everyone together and singing. Compared to some other services like having a small party with all those singers (say, fiber optic internet to a small village), satellite service can be much cheaper than alternatives through economy of scale. So small telcoms can be represented by just getting one or two singers into the show, and not having to set up the whole production. Source: I actually work with these types of satellites on a daily basis",
"I'm assuming you're talking about the communication satellite industry. There are several other ways to make money with satellites, but comm sats seems to be your question. Every satellite that launches contains a range of frequencies of RF energy they can broadcast pointed at the earth. If I'm a small telecom company, I talk to the satellite owner to lease some of that frequency space -- leasing bandwidth. That bandwidth correlates pretty closely to a data rate that can be passed through those frequencies. The higher the data rate the higher the bandwidth, but the more I can do with it. Low data rates might be something like satellite phones, higher data rates might be something like video conferencing. For instance, Gogo Inflight Internet, available on many of the major US airlines, leases bandwidth from (I believe) Inmarsat to provide inflight Internet. They pay Inmarsat to use those frequencies, and make money by charging fliers to use the internet. Inmarsat spends a lot of money up front to do the launch, and a small amount of money per year later to maintain the service. So the longer a satellite is on orbit the more money they can make. Recently, satellite companies have been expanding their reach. Lower frequencies that have been in use for a while (think C-band), broadcast across the entire earth, so you can really only use those frequencies once. Higher frequencies have shaped footprints on the earth, allowing re-use. In the Inmarsat example above, Gogo leases Ku frequencies which are only broadcast onto North America (and in some cases, only the US). That allows them to use the same frequencies to service South America. Ka, even higher frequencies, result in even smaller footprints -- on the order of a couple states -- allowing much more re-use.",
"You’re right... as in “I costed the item at a 20% discount for our sale.” It’s not the right word here",
"Think of satellite access the same way you would power or internet. You don't need to own a nuclear generator or be an ISP to run a website. Companies lease satellite bandwidth basically the same as they have power and internet bills.",
"The satellite compagny will make their satellite so it can handle a relativelly high amount of bandwidth, and the ability to share the bandwidth with more than one client. For example, let's say you make a satellite able to handle 1gigabit, you may split it in 1000 slices of 1Mbit, then assign one slice per client, and then make your 1000 client transmit one after the other (time division sharing). Of course, each client need to sync with the satellite, but that's kinda a detail. Then you can also oversell the capacity, because most client will not use all the speed, so you could have 10000 clients sharing those 1000 time slices. This result in congestion if too many try to transmit at once... But since that is not common, they can get away with it. So, let's say that the satellite cost 20 millions to make and launch, and they expect to get back their money in 10 years (just random numbers to make things simpler), then you need 2 millions dollars in client revenue, which at 1000 clients would be only 2000$/year per client. If they oversell the capacity they could go 10k clients and charge 200$/year. And of course, a satellite can have multiple antennas and polarity (you can have one antenna vertical, the other horisontal. The ground antenna need to be aligned with one or the other. This, due to some radio frequency black magic, will cause I beleive 15db of signal difference, which is more than enought to differenciate between the two. So the same satellite can transmit on two antenna with the same frequency at the same time, and literally double the bandwidth. Dish network actually do that for tv, and is very common for tv satellite (this is why you will see for example 13V and 18V for the dish: the different voltage select the different antenna). And you can even have more than one frequency on the same antenna. All that allow to have more bandwidth per satellite, thru more clients. The more they have, the cheaper it get to send one there, and the bigger the satellite they can afford, which lower their cost per client/capacity.",
"There were recently 4 episodes about this on the NPR [Planet Money]( URL_0 ) podcast First episode dated 11-29-17",
"In another life when I ran a satellite uplink truck for television news I paid around $175 per hour for a 6 mhz slice. The two main satellite groups that we would lease occasional use space are SES and Intelsat. I could lease space for as little as 5 minutes at a time and the price varies depending on whatever deal I could cut with the vendor reselling its space and however much bandwidth I'd need. Lots of vendor uplink trucks are going away with the advent of high speed and reliable cellular connections. In my case I now keep something about a third of the size of a shoebox called a LiveU and can stream video to most broadcast clients. It's a really interesting technology and quite the game changer. I went live from a Blackhawk helicopter after one of the hurricanes this year. I have a feeling lots of these providers have been sweating for a number of years with how much fiber is around and many other alternative ways of moving data around. There will likely always be a demand for satellite services in mission critical applications and the military/government world.",
"[Planet Money]( URL_0 ) just did a four part episode on launching a satellite. They even launched their own.",
"If you feel like having a listen the Planet Money podcast has a great 3 part series on how all of this works: URL_0",
"I can answer this question! Satellite companies that actually own the satellites sell space on their satellite to smaller companies. This way smaller companies have access to satellites.",
"You might want to check NPR Planet Money podcast. They did a 4 episode about space where they got a satellite and put it into orbit. Give it a try, this is great additional info! [Space 1: Planet Money]( URL_0 )",
"I feel like you cursory heard about this and formed a question in your subconscious because Planet Money podcast from NPR just finished a four part story on exactly this question: URL_0 Definitely worth checking out and it answers your question pretty thoroughly.",
"As an example, SpaceX yesterday launched 10 Iridium satellites also carrying a hosted payload provided by another company. SpaceX has great videos, so check out yesterday's launch from 9m00s into the video, where Iridium explains what they did. URL_0 t=9m00s For context, Iridium is a network of about 70 low orbit communication satellites that move around the Earth and combined always have vision of every single part of the Earth. These satellites are built by Iridium. SpaceX is a launch provider, meaning SpaceX is responsible for getting the satellite to the proper orbit. Basically Iridium provides the cargo while SpaceX provides the truck. SpaceX trucks only come in essentially one size right now, so each launch always has a max weight and max volume. Toward OP's question, Iridium realized the truck could carry more than the 10 satellites that they wanted in the same orbit, so Iridium partnered with another company who found hosted payloads. These are like Amazon add-on items that couldn't afford to go to space on their own but would love to ride along if someone else was sending a package to the same place."
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7lly7p | What does a virus gain from attacking our bodies? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"They need the cellular machinery in your body to reproduce. Viruses can't replicate, they can only instruct other cells to make copies of the virus. You're their reproduction vector.",
"The \"intention\" of viruses isn't to attack our bodies but to freeload the whole metabolic and physiological machinery for their profit. Viruses aren't able to reproduce by themselves, they're just a bunch of DNA/RNA, proteins and lipids to coat the genetic material and other molecules to clamp to their host. They lack any actual metabolism. Virus gain from our bodies two things: * all the biological machinery required to reproduce * a mean of transportation to disperse more viruses All the reactions that our body ensues are an immunological answer to an unknown agent. Our antibodies recognize something as threatening and begin the extermination protocol which usually involves things like diarrhea, fever, coughing, or any other symptom."
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7lmc22 | How do the “I am not a robot” things on websites work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"drncgvr",
"drnbark"
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"text": [
"Nice try, robot. You think we would just give you all our secrets?",
"the validation isn't you clicking the box. it's the path of your mouse cursor on the way to clicking the box. bots move the mouse in moves with a signature controlled by software and random number generators. humans don't."
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7lmlnh | What in the brain differentiates between romantic love and platonic love? | What in the brain actually causes the different feelings? I'm not asking how one's feelings differentiate, only their brain—so a scientific *reason*. How does the brain respond differently and cause different chemicals to be produced or whatnot? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The short of it is, when something excites your brain, there is an increased frequency of charge distributions that occur over the neuron. The more exciting something is, the higher frequency (more often) the charges zip back and forth, telling the neuron to release the happy neurochemicals. It is not equal, because your Amgdala and Hippocampus perceive simulations as requiring a different amount of each neurochemical. If you romantically love someone, you have a high frequency of complementary neurochemicals (dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin), operating when your central nervous system is excited from your perception. Contrasting this with plantonic love, you will simply have a decreased amount of activity, and much much less vasopressin. The amount of interactions to successfully trigger the next response (temporal/spatial summation) will be lower, and so the signal doesn't travel as vigorously. This leads to A) the message not completing a \"full circuit\" and B) a decreased overall volume of chemicals. Hope that helped."
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7lmui1 | When creating mashups of songs, how do the producers obtain the vocal samples? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"If it is a fully licensed song; i.e one that all parties involved have agreed to create, then the editors will most likely be given the a copy of all the tracks involved in the song. This will include every instrument, in isolation. This makes it very easy to remix, and rematch, all the disparate parts together into a new, unique song."
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7lmvut | Can someone please explain why the SpaceX rocket looked more like an alien than a typical rocket launch? Also, why was there no sound? Why did it seem to be same size for people who viewed it from 100s if miles apart from each other? Never seen anything like it. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It was just after sunset, and the plume was very high up, so far up that if you were there you would still be able to see the sun( which had set on land but was still making way across pacific). It was very large and high up, so many people were able to see it."
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7lnlxj | why does the amount of calcium in eggs vary if you prepare them differently? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"If the preparation is eggs only then they don't. But many preparations of eggs add things to them. For example Scrambled eggs often adds a bit of milk, omelettes add cheese, deviled eggs add mayonnaise (or miracle whip), all of which add calcium to the dish because they use dairy. You also have different preparations that use different bird species and these can vary in calcium content."
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7lnxdz | Why does human and livestock feces contaminate/pollute rivers when fish and native species also poop near or into the water? | I was watching a documentary about India's rivers and they mentioned how livestock and human waste (along with lots of other shit) was being dumped into the water and this was making it dirty and unsafe to drink. I've been confused by this before because I always assumed that fish and other animals just shit into or near the water. So my question is, why does human and livestock poop make the water unsafe when fish and other animals have been pooping into the water and they've been drinking that with no problem for thousands of years? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ecosystems are about balance. A river is going to have a certain capacity to break down wastes, fish or human, and once you exceed it, it will because unbalanced and most of its creatures will die off. For centuries, there was balance. Humans could only produce so much food, and populations were more stable. From 1500 to 1700, India's population was around 100 million, and grew slowly, so the rivers were, for the most part, able to keep up. With advances in agriculture, medicine, and ironically, sanitation, India's population has increased by 13x in only 300 years. That's 13x as much waste, completely overloading the ecosystem's capacity to break it down.",
"There are two basic answers here. The first is that water really ISN'T all that safe to drink. It's full of bacteria and parasites if not treated in some form or fashion. Hence when you need to boil, filter, use iodine tablets, etc. if you're drinking from most natural water sources - at least if your body doesn't have some resistance to the local bacteria and parasites. For many thousands of years, actually, people didn't primarily drink water. Instead, they drank weak wine and beer, because the fermentation process killed off most of the harmful things in the water. The second answer is a question of volume. You could probably drink from a river that had some fish feces in it without getting particularly sick, because the amount of feces relative to the amount of water is very small. When you start pumping in millions of gallons of human waste, livestock waste, industrial waste, etc. into that river though, the proportion of harmful things in the water goes WAY up. This is especially true in less developed countries, where there are some truly massive populations with relatively low-tech sewage treatment facilities, and where lots of people / animals use the water straight from the source.",
"> fish and other animals have been pooping into the water and they've been drinking that with no problem for thousands of years Animals in the wild are generally less healthy than humans in cities. If you lived with the same level of sanitation, your life expectancy would drop significantly. It's like how an indoor cat is likely to live three times as long as a feral one, though that's due to a host of issues instead of just sanitation."
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7lo2cs | Does the rotation of planet Earth affect how long your flight will be, depending on the direction you're flying? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A very tiny amount. And it's actually faster going West because the planet spins West to East. The *reason* it does so isn't obvious: It's because as you rise in altitude, the linear velocity you conserve from the rotation of the Earth translates to a decreasing amount of angular velocity. Even if you shot straight up at first, your actual path would end up curving Westward because the planet would spin at a faster rate than your arc. But that's ballistic motion, and air travel is not ballistic, so it's an even smaller effect."
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7lol1a | Why do you usually suffer a worse hangover having drunk a variety of different alcohols than when you just drink one type all night? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [Eli5: Why does mixing different kinds of alcohol make you nauseous? Why is it okay if you drink it all at the same time, like in cocktails? ]( URL_3 ) ^(_11 comments_) 1. [ELI5: why shouldn’t we mix different types of alcohol when drinking? ]( URL_0 ) ^(_3 comments_) 1. [Eli5: Why does the mixing of alcoholic beverages seemingly get you drunker quicker/why is it seen as such a bad thing? ]( URL_7 ) ^(_50 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why do I get a worse hangover when I mix different alcohols? ]( URL_6 ) ^(_11 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why is it bad to mix your alcohols, such as drinking both gin and wine in one sitting? ]( URL_5 ) ^(_21 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why is it bad to mix spirits when drinking? ]( URL_4 ) ^(_23 comments_) 1. [Is it true that mixing alcohols is worse than drinking the same through the night? ]( URL_8 ) ^(_25 comments_) 1. [ELI5:Why is it that drinking different types of alcohol over the course of a night makes you drunker and results in a worse hangover? ]( URL_1 ) ^(_4 comments_) 1. [ELI5 why different types of alcohols give me different types of drunk? ]( URL_2 ) ^(_10 comments_)"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d1r6e/eli5why_is_it_that_drinking_different_types_of/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15hwkj/eli5_why_different_types_of_alcohols_give_me/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4btkr8/eli5_why_does_mixing_different_kinds_of_alcohol/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w3sho/eli5_why_is_it_bad_to_mix_spirits_when_drinking/",
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qzyml/eli5_why_does_the_mixing_of_alcoholic_beverages/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/5xm5jt/is_it_true_that_mixing_alcohols_is_worse_than/"
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7lqh4j | How does the Recolor tool in an image editing program know what RGB to change each pixel to match the selected color? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dro640r"
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"text": [
"From what I understand it usually uses the primary and secondary selected colors to determine which color is changed to what. There is also likely a sensitivity range which can be set to determine how close to the selected color it needs to be."
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7lql0y | How does the screen of your car know the name of the current playing song when you are just listening to the radio? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"drontke",
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"text": [
"It's called RBDS. They just send the data along with the regular signal. Your radio gets the extra info and it tells you what song is playing. Edit: a word",
"Ever see Star Trek or some other show where they find \"a signal in the signal\"? It is just like that, the radio signal has all the info for sound and text included. But if you have a simple radio that only decodes the sound you may be left unaware of the signal in the signal (or more likely just a portion of the signal) that has the text.",
"So, FM stands for \"frequency modulation.\" The simple definition of \"modulation\" in this context is the ability to combine multiple signals into one. The transmission is modulated on one end, and then demodulated on the other end. This frequency modulation technology is what allowed FM broadcasts to be in stereo, putting FM at a huge advantage over AM. Starting 40 years ago, some really smart people developed a way to send small amounts of digital data modulated into an analog FM transmission, and from this technology, RDS/RBDS was born. In addition to the song name, it also transmits the radio call sign and other small pieces of information. I believe that in Europe, it can be used to alert drivers of an emergency vehicle approaching, but I'm not sure about that. Anyway, due to the limitations of this decades-old technology, it's pretty unreliable, which is why it's often glitchy, with garbled text from time to time. About 15 years ago, along came HD Radio, in which the *entire* signal is digital. The HD radio spec also allows more bandwidth, or space in the signal, for non-audio data. That's why newer HD radios, like those built into cars with integrated entertainment/navigation systems, can display album cover art in addition to the song title.",
"Not sure about commercial radio stations, but I worked at a public radio station and the DJ had to type in the song info manually."
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7lqlc7 | Down Jacket vs Down Parka in extreme cold? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"dro7pkd"
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"text": [
"The main difference between a jacket and a parka is the length, a jacket will measure to your waste and a parka will typically measure past your buttocks and thigh. The parka will cover you more but can make harnesses and rope work more difficult, so therefore people who are scaling tall mountains gravitate towards the down jacket! I hope this helped a little:)",
"Mountain climbers are engaging in an athletic activity. While they wish to remain warm, they also need to remain very mobile."
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7lqm9q | why did the Falcon 9 launch this week cause such a spectacular display? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dro877j"
],
"text": [
"A few reasons: - It was a [Falcon]( URL_0 ), which is a pretty good sized rocket. - The launch was at sunset. So it wasn't daylight on the ground, but the rocket itself was in daylight. The sunlight reflected off the exhaust plume. - It was a south launch into polar orbit. The track of the launch went near the population centers."
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7lqmep | What effect does Chromatic Abberation have on our perception of depth? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drok4uo"
],
"text": [
"Chromatic aberration is the separation of light by color, the red image is shifted a little relative to the blue image (in the simple ELI5 case where the scene is made of only red and blue things). Human perception of depth is not mostly a color phenomenon, so it doesn't seem like this would make any difference at all. In cases of \"normal\" CA, caused by imperfect lens choices, the edges might be a little less distinct because the red image is shifted a little. This might make purple balls have unclear edges when you examine them in detail. Again, depth perception isn't a detail process, but if you were examining photographs you might think it would impact things. The human eye+brain is an awesome piece of hardware image processing. It's not like cameras and computer stuff. All these answers are totally different if you're talking about computer vision and factory depth measurement."
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7lqpmr | Why do you sometimes see fog when the air temp is below freezing? | Yesterday it was -5°C and yet there was fog all throughout the area. I thought fog only occured in warm/cool humid weather, wouldn't the air being below freezing keep the amount of moisture necessary for fog out of the air? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dro819m",
"dro7un9"
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"text": [
"It actually takes less total moisture to create fog when the air is cold -- the dense air becomes saturated more quickly. This is why your (invisible) breath turns to visible fog when you breathe out on a cold day.",
"While it is true that cold air holds less moisture than warm air, it can still hold enough for it to condense visibly when it reaches the dew point."
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7lqv2w | Why do people curse when they have an orgasm? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dro919g"
],
"text": [
"I’m guessing cause it’s a single syllable word that can have a lot of feeling behind it. Saying “fuck!” Is WAY more efficient than “Mmm, yes, Capital job, ol chap. Got me good this time hohoho!”"
],
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7lrd5x | Why are some things "so cute it hurts?" | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drodc68",
"drofvsh"
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"text": [
"There is a strong link between emotion and physical symptoms, and vice versa. A really tragic moment can cause us to be overwhelmed with painful grief, and the opposite can happen where we get so elated or happy by something that we actually experience physical sensation. And as a trend, happy people get better from illnesses that physically affect them better than sad people do. The triggers and the overall intensity of this different greatly from person to person. What one person likes, another may love to the point of having their blood pressure spike, or mildly hyperventilating. A simple act of kindness might be one that someone could simply appreciate and be thankful for, or if they've been mistreated for a while or have had zero happiness for a long time, might be a overwhelming or painfully intense experience. Your particular trigger is your first kitten. For others, it's their first puppy, or their first baby. And for others, they like their pet, perhaps even deeply, but maybe aren't as overwhelmed by it because they're wired differently or have different backgrounds.",
"Cute aggression was explained to me that the same feelings we have when we violently hate something stir the same brain receptors when we utterly adore something. Our brain just wants to punch the overload of emotion one way or another."
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7lrl5g | if men's body temperature is slightly higher than women's, why are men hairier? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Women don't actually have a lower body temperature than men - the heat is just distributed differently. Women's bodies are better at maintaining core body temperature at the expense of body temperature in the extremities. Temperature also doesn't have much to do with hair. Human hair simply isn't effective insulation. Consider how hair patterns break down by geography. East Asians tend not to have much body hair - despite the fact that places like Korea and Japan are actually quite cold. In contrast, Indian men tend to have glorious amounts of hair, despite the fact that much of India has an equatorial climate. No one knows for sure why men are hairier, but it's likely for the same reason that male lions have manes: as a secondary sex characteristic that indicates virility."
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7lrly7 | Difference between Bacteria and Archea | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Both are microscopic single celled organisms that do not have a nucleus. However, bacteria have cell walls made up of peptidoglycan, and archaea have cell walls but are not made up of peptidoglycan."
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7lrqat | Depressive realism | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's the idea that people who suffer from depression see the world in more realistic way. It boils down to the assumption that depressed people see something about the world that the undepressed can't see, or maybe overlook.",
"The human brain has all kinds of ways of tricking you into believing that you have more control over yourself, your environment, and your fate, than you really do. It's the basis for a lot of logical fallacies. A depressive realist is not fooled by as many (or possibly any) of these fallacies. As a result, they tend to have both a more realistic evaluation of life, and also be more depressed.",
"Sad people see things as they truly are, while happiness makes other people have blurry vision.",
"Depressed realists see things more practically sure, but they're depressed alright, and depression can be a strong influence in making impractical decisions. So although they do see things practically, that doesn't always mean they act practically. As someone who has a depressed realist for a lover, this is what I've seen and have been wanting to say so thank you for opening this subreddit.",
"A theory is as follows: The depressed mind is severely hindered in making new connections. New connections between new experiences and memories are how we function and grow as people. We're wired to crave novelty and to learn. We are also pattern-matchers without peer. Unable to make connections, the depressed mind turns to pattern-matching instead. Every sad and horrid thing that happens just confirms to the depressed mind that the world is a horrible place. Everything that might challenge that is dismissed or written off as a fluke. This is called confirmation bias, and it is a very powerful thing. And nothing challenges it, because they cannot make the new connections necessary to shift their thought process.",
"It has been shown through statistical analysis that people who lie to others and themselves are more successful. Confidence is very important, so someone who lies to others optimistically about what they can accomplish, and who lies to themselves about what they will get done is more likely to be successful. They may fall short, but are likely to get more done because people get wrapped up in the optimism and get something done. Sometimes it's a great thing, sometimes it's the Holocaust. People who are honest about their own capabilities and the state of the world are more likely to be depressed, to be cynical, to give up because things look so shitty.",
"We sometimes need depression as much as we hate its gloomy presence. While happy people tend to turn a blind eye to what they perceive as depressing (usually the truth) and opt to satisfy their hunger for happiness by articulating their thoughts in a positive manner by thinking of themselves as superior, the depressed ones tend to overanalyze things, resulting in a more realistic view of life. Depression deprives us from all senses of enjoyment and fun, all that is left is the mere world and the sad facts that get ignored in the state of ecstasy.",
"There is evidence to support it but it is not accepted as fact in the same way as relativity is accepted as fact. Psychology is a soft science and so there are valid critiques made of the depressive realism hypothesis. Having had severe deprssion I can say my thoughts were not realistic, and a whole field of psychotherapy, cognitive therapy, exists to address this.",
"Some people think that people have either good or bad self-esteem, but that is technically incorrect. Rather, we have people with high levels of self-esteem, and low levels. Self esteem can be a wonderful thing and positively influence your life and social interactions, but it is also fuel to many cognitive biases which serve to enhance or preserve self-esteem. A lack of self-esteem would not fuel these biases as much, leading to a more 'realistic' view of the world. (It can be the other way around, and a lower tendency for these biases can lead to lower self-esteem) E.g. They are more likely to see flaws in both themselves and their peer groups (where self-esteem would encourage you to overlook them), they are more likely to see a pessimistic situation (where self esteem and optimism would encourage you to say 'it's temporary' or corcumstantial), etc. These people also tend to be on the depressive side, either caused by or provocking the lack of self-esteem. (Hence the false causation between depression and realism, but that's another story) This is why it is called depressive realism. However, it does not cancel out negative biases and can have a similarly warped view of the situation (only in a pessimistic manner). Much like how an optimist will gladly say 'i told you so' when thinga get better, they take their 'i told you sos' in negative outcomes to fuel their own confidence in pessimism. It's also pretty bad for your levels of well-being and mental health.",
"Here might be an example: I went through a severe depression stemmed from an existential crisis. It was because I realized since nothing in morality is black and white, I felt like being on the \"right\" side, doing the \"right\" thing, was all relative, and therefore meaningless. I now felt sorry for \"bad\" people, had less admiration of \"good\" people, and felt my work (in healthcare, \"saving\" lives) was futile, and sometimes I felt that my job did not do the right thing (what the hospital wants vs what a patient needs) . I tend not to polarize in most debates, and therefore I lost the feeling of being passionate. I hate that there are so many catch 22s in life, in which both answers can feel wrong, but you have to make a choice (abortion issues, war, decisions about very ill family members etc) Not sure if this follows the definition but wanted to share.",
"People might talk about depressed folks not being 'fooled' by our silly brains making inaccurate connections, but it comes down to whats psychologically beneficial for you. We are all subject to a range illusory bias, illusions of control and optimism bias (amoungst others), and generally inflated self perceptions of all kinds. We generally think we are better then we are in a range of fields, expect to have more control over circumstances then we actually have and expect better outcomes for ourselves than is reasonably or statistically warranted. And this is a good thing! It keeps us motivated, engaged and striving for the next good event or outcome, whether it's statistically reasonable or not. The old adage 'youv'e got to be in it to win it ' comes to mind as without these illusions, we would prehaps lack the drive to get out there and improve in the areas we 'think' we are good in and we wouldnt be out there to grab hold of the next unexpected thing, person, experience or opportunity that might bring value to our lives. Depressed people are realists, which might be fashionable to strive for in our more philosophical moment's, but they're also chronically inactive and stuck in ruminative thought, and it's these two features that stop people getting out there and creating value. Sure depressive people have more accurate self perceptions, but sometimes we need just a little illusion to even think about getting back in the race. Tl:dr - depressed people don't fall prey to a range of illusory bias, its these bias's that activate people and its healthy to be a little biased some of the time"
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7lrxyw | if our brains can store up to 2.5 petabytes of information then why can't it record everything we go through in our life? why can't we remember everything? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"droi2i2"
],
"text": [
"What you're overlooking is all of the sensory data that we intake at all times, if we set our brains to record in 100% detail in regards to sight and sound we'd have to cease other functions. Basically we don't have the RAM for that"
],
"score": [
3
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7lsl85 | How does sunscreen help protect our skin? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"droq0ef",
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"dros8cs",
"drozmhq",
"droz4gv"
],
"text": [
"The sun puts out visible light that we can see, it also puts out light we can't see called ultra Violet or UV light. Our skin absorbs the UV light which causes damage we can see and feel as sunburn and eventually cancer. Sun screen is a combination of ingredients including metals like zinc or titanium which reflect most of the light away from our skin instead of allowing it to be absorbed. And organic chemicals which absorb the UV light before it can get to our skin It's like a camouflage to hide our skin from the UV light.",
"Sunscreen works by combining organic and inorganic active ingredients. Inorganic ingredients like zinc oxide or titanium oxide reflect or scatter ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Organic ingredients like octyl methoxycinnamate (OMC) or oxybenzone absorb UV radiation, dissipating it as heat. Some sunscreens protect us from the two types of damaging UV radiation: UV-A and UV-B. Both UV-A and UV-B cause sunburns and damaging effects such as skin cancer. Literally the first result on google URL_0",
"Finally one I can comment on! I just did about two weeks of research on this. Two types of sunscreen active ingredients: Chemical and Physical Chemical ingredients absorb the wavelengths of light that are harmful to your skin. Physical ingredients are usually metallic and reflect the wavelengths of light that would be harmful to your skin! There are typically a lot of different chemical active ingredients, and only a few physical variants. The sunscreens with chemical active ingredients are usually cheaper than the ones that contain physical active ingredients. You can find out why if you research more, as it gets more involved! Edit: someone also pointed out that physical ingredients are classified as \"inorganic\", and chemical ones \"organic\".",
"So if I look a bath in the strongest possible spf, then went to the beach and laid out all day, would I never get sunburnt or tan?",
"So one thing I haven't seen mentioned is that there are two types of UV. A and B. B causes more apparent damage and A causes less obvious damage like eye damage and skin cancer. UV B is a shorter wavelength and in turn is higher energy. Imagine a tiny little wrecking ball. UV C also exists but is involved with the ozone layer. Hope this helps explain what exactly is being blocked."
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7lso9p | How does carbonation work? Why does it not dissipate immediately after opening your beverage? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"droonma"
],
"text": [
"Carbonation is basically carbon dioxide CO2 dissolved in water. CO2 naturally dissolves in water somewhat, but to make a fizzy drink it's forced in at high pressure. Increasing the pressure allows (forces really) more CO2 to dissolve. When you open a bottle or a can the pressure reduces and the CO2 can begin to escape. That's why you get the noise. Dissolved CO2 can't instantaneously detach itself, since this requires energy. Notably, since most fizzy drinks are consumed cold there is a reduced amount of energy available. So, it will release over time. The reason it'll release quickly if you drink half, replace the cap and give it a really good shake is that you're giving it the energy needed to release. But, not all the CO2 will release even in a 'flat' drink. If you drink a thoroughly flat carbonated drink it will still taste fizzy. That taste is dissolved CO2."
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7lt4kh | How an electric motor generates so much torque from a complete stop. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drot4uh"
],
"text": [
"The windings of an electric motor apply the most torque at 0 revolutions. The full force of the magnetic field is applied until the armature moves. Then torque drops a little as the motion changes the path the current takes. Since an electric motor makes a twisting force, that's much more efficient than a piston engine which makes a sliding force and translates it to rotation through an eccentric crankshaft."
],
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21
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7ltn6k | Why do Saturn's rings have gaps and are so wide? How come all the objects don't just condense into one thick, lone ring? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"droxqbz"
],
"text": [
"The gaps are the orbits of moons. Saturn's moons clear their orbits by either attracting dust and rocks to themselves or ejecting it out into other orbits. Each gap is as wide as its moon's ability to influence the rocks and ice that make up the rings."
],
"score": [
41
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7lu03f | What is a headache and how do certain drugs aid them? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drqb3hq"
],
"text": [
"In short, headaches are when blood vessels in the brain dilate (IOW, become inflamed). Most headache medications help relieve this inflammation in some way or another, or reduce blood flow. Some longer acting medications for prevention are used to prevent seizures as well, and work by decreasing nerve activity. Headaches are something that really aren’t well understood by medicine."
],
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7lu1wr | How do wireless video game controllers work without lag when similar wireless devices have delay? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drpr7kq",
"drp0af5"
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"text": [
"You get latency from your screen refresh - up to 17ms minimum at 60fps. You get latency from rendering - if you have a frame buffer of 2, you're looking at 34ms extra latency. You get latency from processing. With a wired controller you would have latency from the USB controller, and the latency caused by the signal going up the wire. So a wireless controller vs wired controller, the input latency difference is really tiny. In fact, because the speed of signal over air is lower than over a cable, wireless can and sometimes is faster than wired. Additionally, compared to many wireless devices, the signal from game controllers is tiny. You get some latency from the size of a file being sent divided by the bandwidth. With a game controller, the bandwidth is orders of magnitude higher than the latency. If you have 16 buttons and 2 sticks with 2 axis of 32 bit accuracy, you are looking at 18 bytes of data. Bluetooth might have 3 MByte/s bandwidth, so you can poll 1000 times a second and still be using less than 1% of the bandwidth. A picture meanwhile might be 4 MB, which would have a transmission time of over a second over bluetooth.",
"Afaik, they usually do. The delay is really small and unless you play at a high level/a lot(like a lot lot) you will barely notice it at all. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong"
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7lu2cn | Why does it take longer for a computer to recognise an incorrect password than a correct one? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drozuya",
"drp3253"
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"text": [
"It doesn't take longer: typically there's a deliberate delay programmed in. This delay slows down automatic password crackers that work by trial and error.",
"While there are automatic slowdown things to stop you repeatedly typing wrong passwords in according to a Microsoft Dev there's a reason URL_0 Basically if you put in the same password you used last time the computer's like \"this is fine\" and logs you on. But if you put in the wrong one first it needs to check on the network that you haven't changed it elsewhere in the meantime hence the delay."
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|
7lu4vp | Is eating stuff off the floor good for your immune system? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drp1b52"
],
"text": [
"Think of you immune system as your body's soldiers. In order to get better at combat, they have to train. The way they do that is overwhelming germs. So, if you get a small amount of germs in your system, your body attacks it - at first it loses a lot. But then it gets stronger. For instance; when you get a flu shot, the Doctor shoots a small amount of the flu virus into you. Your soldiers attack it and learns how to fight it. Later, if you're exposed to the flu - like kissing a girl or boy with it, you get it, but your body knows how to defend against it. However, sometime viruses mutate and your immune system starts having troubles again. At this point, your doctor might give you steroids to help your body stay strong while it fights off the virus. When it comes to bacteria getting into your body, its basically the same thing, accept the Doctor can give you antibiotics - which are kinda like a Mercenary Unit coming in to help your soldiers fight. Unfortunately, antibiotics don't work on viruses. So they tend to be harder to fight off. Now, when you don't wash your hands or eat food that's dropped on the floor, your body can fight these germs, but usually there's simply too many germs to defeat - the immunity soldiers never get a chance to learn how to fight them. They just get attacked and overwhelmed. Like if the doctor gave you too much of a flu shot. At this point, your body calls out the nukes - it raises your temperature (sometimes too high) and opens your pours. This starts burning out the bacteria or viruses and flushing everything out through your pours - fever and sweating. You also get really tired because all your energy is being utilized to fight your sickness. This is also why you need to make sure you drink plenty of liquids when you're sick - you'll become dehydrated if you're not careful."
],
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7lu5hn | Why do so many things smell much better than they taste? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drp0m1u"
],
"text": [
"This should be an interesting one. I don’t believe that I’d agree that things smell better than they taste more often than not. In fact, I’d probably go the opposite way. However, it’s my understanding that we don’t all smell, and taste in the exact same way. Or at least it’s not a given that we do. I’ll hang around to watch this one."
],
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7lu6az | What makes sunlight so special? Why does it make your skin produce vitamin D but an UV lamp doesn't? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drp0rxn"
],
"text": [
"An UV lamp does make you produce vitamin D. The main difference is the intensity of the light / radiation. Most lamps only work well if they are very close to you. Also, ideally they should be used very early in the morning."
],
"score": [
20
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7luaea | how is laser eye surgery like LASIK achieved? What is the technology, how does it work, and how is the procedure executed? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drp3eye",
"drp1alo"
],
"text": [
"Not sure how much you know about eye problems so will explain some stuff. Light reflects from your lens onto your retina... Action potentials, transduction and there you have an image. Light - cornea - bit of space - iris - lens - \"space\" - retina is the order. Myopia (short sightedness) is an issue where the eye muscles (ciliary muscles) are relatively tight and causes your lens to be relatively tight or fat, changing the \"normal\" shape of your eye. Causing light to not focus on the retina. LASIK would change the shape of the cornea instead of the lens. Mainly because your cornea isn't flat, kind of curved so will reflect light into the eye onto the retina. Also lens is hard to get to... More invasive. Laser is used to open up a flap on your cornea. Pretty much more lasers are used again to remove underlying tissue below your cornea (stroma), removing this tissue can cause light to be reflected onto the retina so it's \"normal\". Flap is closed, and perfect vision is ensured (hopefully).",
"Use a scalpel to cut the top off your eyeball and fold it back like the lid on a tin can. Use a laser to reshape the inner surface of the eyeball much like the curved face of a lens. Fold back the lid. Job done. Overpriced for the time it takes to do. And completely pointless if you are in near 40 as your you will need glasses within 5 years as your eyes are too old."
],
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7lucm4 | How do forensic investigators ensure that recovered computer files are accurate representations of the damaged or deleted file? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drp1wdh"
],
"text": [
"In short: They can't. Either a file is on a hard drive (or other storage device) or it's not. When an investigator \"recovers\" a file, usually it just means that they found a file that's not indexed. On modern operating systems every file in the system is listed in an index called a *master file table* that tells the operating system where to physically look on the storage device for the file it wants. The operating system then creates a file structure hierarchy which is what you typically see on your system where everything is broken down into subfolders. When you delete a file in Windows and it goes in the recycling bin, then empty the recycling bin you haven't actually deleted that file. The operating system just marks that file as being *safe to overwrite* but if you have the right program and are quick enough you can recover or \"undelete\" these files before they are overwritten. You may recover a file that is partially overwritten in which case it will most likely appear as corrupted or damaged. Depending on the type of file you may still be able to open it or at least view the underlying code to determine the nature of it. When a file is overwritten partially it won't become cross contaminated with the new data being written as that data is protected by the master file table so the old file will only be losing data. In essence a forensic investigator can only present evidence for data they sufficiently have uncovered, and there's no real way to create something out of nothing when it comes to file recovery, the closest they could do is find a matching duplicate online for what they believe the undamaged file looks like but that will probably only work if the original file isn't very damaged to begin with."
],
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7luh8m | How does gargling salt water help with tonsillitis? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drp2i3n"
],
"text": [
"Tonsillitis is usually a bacterial infection (although it can be viral). Salt water surrounding bacteria is a hypertonic environment and will draw water out of the cell. Without water the bacteria dies. Less bacteria means less replication which means your immune system can deal with it quicker."
],
"score": [
24
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|
7luuma | Satire and irony | No matter how many times I read an example, I can’t grasp it. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"drpaaqk",
"drp8vk6",
"drp4r1q",
"drpe6h1"
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"text": [
"Irony is a part of satire, so we'll start with irony. There are a couple forms of irony: Dramatic irony is a situation in which the audience knows something that a character does not. (Juliet isn't really dead. Romeo doesn't know that.) This is typically used to add to the tension of a situation. Classical irony is the triumph of wit over hubris. We don't typically associate this with irony anymore, but any sort of parlor scene from a detective story is a good example. Verbal irony is sarcasm and is mostly performative in nature. An intended meaning is dramatically different from an expressed meaning. This is typically indicated by tone, gesture, and circumstance. Paralipsis (talking about something by saying you're not talking about it) is the easiest method of verbal irony to translate from performance to written word. Situational or cosmic irony is when the outcome of a series of events is different from the expected outcome. For instance, in *The Wizard of Oz* all three of Dorothy's companions are questing for a character trait they felt they lacked and hoped to receive from the allegedly god-like Oz, who in fact lacks the traits the companions sought and would be unable to grant those traits even if he had them himself because is revealed to be a mere mortal. Had Oz been a god, he would still have been unable to grant these gifts, but the situational would have been elevated to the cosmic. Now satire uses these forms of irony, a context of entertainment and lightheartedness, and a tendency towards absurdity, to make the serious (Bill O'Reilly, colonial attitudes of British landlords to suffering during the Potato Famine) seem silly. (Stephen Colbert, a solution that involved raising Irish children as a food resource for the wealthy points out that the population of a colony is, in fact, a valuable resource regardless of their caloric value.)",
"Irony: When Alanis Morissette writes a song called \"Ironic\" that she thinks contains examples of irony, instead they are all just examples of 'bad luck,' thus she unintentionally writes a song that's ironic.",
"Satire - Exaggeration or using a material in a usually comical way to mock it Irony - Best example is when a man who advocates for more people to take buses gets hit by a bus",
"Satire is a form of social criticism that uses humor to exaggerate some aspect of society you wish to criticize. In *A Modest Proposal*, Jonathan Swift famously criticizes British indifference to the poverty and famine in Ireland by proposing the Irish raise money by selling their children to the rich to eat. By structuring it as the sort of policy suggestion a British politician favoring wealthy British landlords might make, he highlighted the callousness, cruelty, and ineffectiveness of British policy in Ireland. There are a number of forms of irony. Verbal irony is when what you say is different from what you mean. Sarcasm is either the lowest form of verbal irony or falls just short of it, depending who you ask. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something the characters do not, creating suspense. Horror films often employ it, like when the young couple sneaks out into the woods where we know the serial killer is lurking. Situational irony is a coincidence accompanied by a sudden reversal. In O. Henry's *The Gift of the Magi*, a poor man sells his heirloom pocket watch to buy his wife a fine set of combs for her beautiful long hair. At the same time, she cuts off her hair and sells it to buy a platinum chain for her husband's watch. The coincidence is they both made great sacrifices to buy gifts at the same time, the reversal is both gifts are now useless. Irony is often negative, but in this case is it positive, as it underlines the couple's love for one another."
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