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n0fs1b | How are vegitables sold all year round? | Potatoes take 2-4 months to grow and are usually only planted between March and May. How are there enough to sell in any of the other months? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Potatoes specifically hold up well in cold storage and can be shelved for months. More generally, the growing season is inverted in the Southern Hemisphere so some crops that are difficult to store are cultivated in multiple locations around the world to try and overlap seasons. There are also greenhouse and sub-optimal condition methods to keep produce available when it’s out of season in both hemispheres, but you may find that these out-of-season fruits and vegetables have been negatively impacted by poor growing conditions. Out-of-season apples are quite mealy.",
"The growing season varies based on where in the world you live. A lot of American produce comes from Mexico, which is closer to the equator and warm year round. The south and west also have longer growing seasons than the north. Between all this, there are enough harvests to cover the needs.",
"It depends a lot on the vegetable. Some, like root vegetables, can be stored for many months. Some, like lettuce and celery, can be grown almost year-round in places with a mild winter climate (like California and Florida, in the US). Some, like tomatoes and cucumbers, are grown in greenhouses almost year-round. Many fruits and a few vegetables that need a winter climate to grow, are grown in the southern hemisphere (especially Chile), where the seasons are reversed. There's a huge amount of logistics and technology that goes into making sure you always have a consistent selection of produce at the supermarket, but even so, you'll probably find that the price and quality aren't so great in the late winter and early spring.",
"Mostly cold storage. Sometimes imports and sometimes enclosed farmlands. The harvesting season is still a huge thing but loses it's importance with time. We can preserve our food with cold storage. Think them like bigger fridges, large enough to take huge amounts of food to supply entire cities with it. Imports are also a factor. There are many places that have warmer climates and they have more sunny and hot days in a year. This is crucial to grow vegetables. In short, the farmers in these kind of climates can double harvest. Enclosed farmlands allow you to create your own climate. You can adjust the heat of the farmland and produce anything as long as you have the right soil characteristics and enough water."
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n0fva6 | why do eye muscles twitch when someone is sleep deprived? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sleep deprivation may affect how neurotransmitter receptors work. This means excess neurotransmitters may build up in the brain. The impact that a lack of sleep has on neurotransmitters function may lead to muscle twitching. A common place to experience muscle twitching from tiredness is in the eyelid.",
"Your eye muscles are under constant use. First, muscles only contract. So if your eye is looking to the right a bit and trying to stay still, the muscles are pulling right, but also to the left to balance out the tension and keep them still. So they are rarely ever \"relaxed\". Throw in fatigue and one muscle being more tired than the other, and they don't coordinate very well. Also they always have a small amount of twitch to them. Everyone's eyes always shake just a little bit, but you mostly ignore this familiar sensation. It's only when the twitches get pronounced that you feel them. So the tired twitching is an exaggeration of a normal process, not a new behavior. Fyi one of the reasons your were twitch is to prevent your brain from ignoring the input. Objects that do not move, are deemed irrelevant and not processed. Basically you don't see things that are stationary. For example, you don't see the veins and such in your eyes as they move with the eye. So your eyes jiggle to keep that table in front of you from being ignored entirely. I've read about this a lot, as I have a birth defect canned nistagmis which creates pronounced, chronic shaking of the eyes."
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n0fvwa | How come people around the world all use the same math, but we all speak different languages? | If you think about it, math is the language that helps humans understand the universe. Different aspects of math originated from different places around the globe. How come math has been able to stay globally consistent, but spoken languages are all different depending on where you live? I hope my question makes sense. Thanks in advance! | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Math is way more universal than language. You can change words and their definitions, but you can't change logic. Although the old Babylonians split numbers in steps of 12 rather than 10. Most peoples split them into steps of 10 because that's how many fingers we have.",
"Math is not as human invention, it's a human discovery. Math is a constant. It's the building blocks of the universe. Language is simply something that we made up in order to communicate and different people will have made it up differently.",
"Well, yes and no. A few advanced civilizations (including one American one) were able to derive the trigonometric ratios, but in general people learned them from the Indians. The Babylonians and Egyptians were generally aware of the trig ratios but it was the Greeks that were able to (Hipparchus of Nicaea) created the first trig table. The Indians learned in the 12th century and we use their terminology in modern math. Algebra (invented by a gentleman named Al Kharizmi) solved problems that previously required complicated geometry. This was learned by Europeans like Descartes who advanced mathematics significantly. Then calculus came along by later Europeans. So, really, we all use the same math because it all came from the same place. That place is generally ancient Greece and Baghdad (we systematically undre-represent the Arab contributions to modern science) for the fundamentals and then Renaissance Europe for advanced algebra and calculus. Math has had a far shorter evolution than spoken and written language, and since it is practiced by far fewer people its evolution forks less frequently. Not everyone in the world will know algebra, but everyone in the world will speak a language. With that many contributors fast evolution is realistic, leading to wildly different languages like Mandarin and English. Math isn't similar in that respect, it is practiced and understood by not nearly as many people, and the people that do tend to come from educated households, so sticking to tradition and learning it without bastardizing it into your own language or methods is more practical. It is why we still use Latin and Greek in the sciences, we could anglicize everything but the only people who use that lexicon regularly will know enough Latin and Greek that it isn't a problem. There is no pressure to adjust that vocabulary to one spoken by the general population. TLDR; Most people learned math from the same sources as one another, so the opportunity for evolution in terms of a unique language is small. Additionally, those who become intimately familiar with the art tend to take on the vocabulary of the art, as opposed to changing the vocabulary to a local dialect.",
"Many answer mention the universality of math, which is true (and a great philosophy discussion) However, math looked really different in the past, or in ancient culture. Old math is mostly text, the usage of symbols appeared only with calculus (\\~16-17th century) So yes many different culture developed mathematical method to calculate the perimeter of a circle, but it doesn't mean that they could use other's discovery that were using very different form Nowadays math are very well standardized, and the main reason for math is not its universalism but colonialism and cultural expansion of Europe",
"What color is the sky? Ask that question to your friend, your parent, or a 5-year old living on the other side of the planet and the answer will be the same. The *word* they use may be different, but the *color* will be the same. Language is simply how people communicate concepts like \"the sky is blue\". The language used doesn't change that fact. Math, like the color of the sky, is a concept. The language used to describe math, the concept of adding two things together, or removing things from a group, is different all around the world. But the concept of math is universal. And here's a fun fact for your friends: *crows* can do math! Crows can count and add and subtract. If they see three people walk into a building but only two leave, the crow will *wait* for the third person to leave before leaving their nest. That's pretty neat.",
"> how come math has been able to stay globally consistent The simple answer is that Math was only used by a few, and developed throughout the world. When ~95% of the population is illiterate, it's easy to spread a single kind of math worldwide, but those 95% still speak their own language.",
"Well because math is an property of the universe. Language is completely made up. As for the base ten system it is popular in most cultures likely because the whole ten finger thing. Further math was initially only for the educated and affluent to explore so having a standard system of notation was useful for communication.",
"A lot of people prove math as a part of nature using physics. But physics is not math. Math is math. Without humans, acceleration would exist. But without humans would the concept of numbers exist? Do words exist that describe things that do not exist? Is language not just a description of the natural world the same as math? In different cultures, different mathematical concepts exist. Not every culture had a concept of 0 or infinite. Today, math is well standardized among cultures. And basic concepts are created universally such as addition and subtraction. But order of operations is not a universal fact of nature, it's an agreed upon standard.",
"Because math is the thing itself. Language is how we talk about the thing. There have been different systems of mathematical notation -- e.g. Roman numerals, Chinese numerals, Japanese numerals etc. These are like languages."
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n0g8kz | How do speakers produce multiple sounds at the same time. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a bit hard to visualise but they use a principle called linear superposition which basically means that you can add any number of sine waves (single, pure notes) on top of each other to create any sound profile you want. Think of it like moving a steering wheel: you can do small changes to align yourself to the road, while also doing a big movement to get round a corner (sorry it's not a great analogy). The key thing is that the speaker is only making one, very complex noise. It isn't making separate noises for drums, guitar and voice. It just adds them all together and plays the result. Your brain can separate them out again because we know the difference.",
"Sounds are waves. \"Pure sounds\" are perfectly shaped sine waves, but composite sounds happen because of a property of waves that [they can add up]( URL_1 ), basically the effect of simple sine waves all compounded onto a single \"complex\" wave. If you want to visualize it, the [surface of the ocean]( URL_0 ) has bass (the big swells), and also high pitched \"sounds\" in the little waves created by the wind. A fishing floater on that surface would \"feel\" both the bass (big waves) and the high pitched sounds (small waves) at the same time. So you recognize drums vs. violins vs. trumpets vs. the voice of the opera singer because your brain is very good at decomposing the \"complex\" wave it hears, to the individual waves. Part of the process of \"decomposition by frequency\" is your [inner ear]( URL_2 ), where the sound waves from outside go around this spiral of hairs and sensors, and the sound frequencies are \"separated\" by the hairs at one end vibrating with only the deep sounds, whereas the much more fine hairs at the other end vibrate only with the high pitched sounds. So your inner ear splits the sound into multiple frequencies. And then the brain takes it from there and recognizes not just frequencies, but also that they belong to certain instruments, or voices belong to certain people, and not only that, but your brain figures out the *meaning* behind words. Brain does the same with light, by the way: light frequences are color, you see color, but you don't just see splotches of color, you recognize objects, faces, *emotions on faces*.",
"Basically you're adding together sounds. All the sounds added together make a pattern, and the speaker vibrates that pattern. It's a bit like... Imagine painting. Splash blue paint on a page, the light reflects and you see the page and blue marks. Splash yellow on the page, the light reflects and you see yellow. Splash those two exact same patters on the same page, you'll see blue, yellow, and green where they mix together. It's a bit like that, except instead of the light reflecting off the page and paint and into your eye, the speaker vibrates the mix of sounds together into your ears.",
"Your ear does only one thing; vibrate. Your brain interprets all the overlapping sounds it hears in those vibrations. A microphone does the same thing and turns vibrations into electrons. A speaker does the inverse. The first telephones only had a single combination mouth / ear piece. It all works because the multiple waves from the environment combine together. This happens whether the waves are air, electrons, light, etc.",
"The way sound works is by compressing the air in waves, leaving waves of compressed and decompressed air. These compressions can interfere with each other and carry multiple vibrations at once through the air, much like your tv cable sends red, green, blue, and brightness signals all at once, but since the electrons are vibrating differently, the tv can pick them out. With sound, these interferences can be made by vibrating a speaker in the same pattern. Rather than being purely \"on\" or \"off,\" a speaker's driver can vibrate in many different ways and stop anywhere in it's translation depending on how electricity hits the driver. This can make funky shaped waves that carry all of the different sounds inside of them, more or less. Otherwise, you get closer to a pure sine wave which has equal peaks and troughs and looks rather pleasant. The same kind of sound you get from a simple PC speaker made for post beeps and codes.",
"Any combination of sounds can be represented as a single waveform. The more sounds you add together, the more complex and \"squiggly\" the waveform becomes, but it is still a single waveform. The speakers are simply producing those complex waveforms.",
"If you're interested, how do people know how to \"add sounds\", there's a special idea in maths for handling that (and much more, like multiplying polynomials!). It's called \"Fourier Transformation\" and it's really interesting! & #x200B; I higly recommend watching [this]( URL_1 ) video for understanding it. & #x200B; For understanding how it works in the computer, as an algorithm, I found [this lovely]( URL_0 ) video."
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n0g9a5 | If plants divide the water molecule, where are the water molecules re-created? | As I understand, plants divide the water molecule during the photosynthesis. If so, water molecules have to be created again somewhere in nature, where? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When material is burned or metabolized (burned for cellular energy), water is formed as a result. A simple form of natural gas, methane CH4, can be burned with oxygen to form CO2 and H2O: carbon dioxide and water. Glucose is similarly broken down in our cells, although more slowly. We sweat, pee, and exhale water out all the time. This goes back into the environment and completes the water cycle as rain.",
"The water is recreated when the products of photosynthesis are oxidized. Photosynthesis takes CO2, H2O, & energy and combines them to make glucose (C6H12O6) & O2. *Aerobic respiration* is essentially the same reaction, but in reverse—you start with glucose and O2, and wind up with CO2, H2O, & energy."
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n0ge5l | Are our organs wet on the outside? | So I guess there are two parts to this question 1) Is there a gap between the inner lining of our torso muscles and our organs 2) If there is, is there some kind of fluid that our organs float in I do not know much about anatomy | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a moistness to the exterior of our organs, but they aren’t like sopping wet. I’m a Surg tech and handled many various organs after being removed and they are almost like the slickness of an earthworm. That could also be general blood and fluids from the procedure itself, though.",
"Our organs don’t float! They sit in pouches stuck to the abdominal walls and tissue. The inside of our bodies is moist though, to prevent friction that could tear sensitive organs/tissue",
"Take a laundry bag and stuff it with clothing. That's your torso and all of the organs in it. The organs don't float. They are nice and tightly packed up. As far as liquid -- think of a paper towel that is pretty damp but not dripping. That's about how much liquid is in between each organ. Just enough so the organs don't stick to each other and can move as you move.",
"There should not be a gap. But if there is a gap then the cells would treat it as if it were a blood vessel and exchange fluids and nutrients with it just the same. And since there is nothing refilling the gap with more fluids it will all get absorbed by the surrounding cells."
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n0gid6 | How do bank phishing scams actually work? | A friend of mine recently got scammed by a bank phishing link sent to her phone. She made the mistake of clicking on the link (it was a fake message saying someone had made a transaction and to click the link if it wasn't her) and next thing she knew, $5k was taken from her bank account. She didn't enter any details at any point, she just clicked it. She was luckily able to call her bank and get the money back, but it got me thinking - how are scammers able to take money from you just because you click on something through your text messages? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think it depends if she has connected any electronic fund transfer systems to it, eg. Apple Pay, pay pal and cash app",
"I've seen many that will create a fake \"login\" page, and use any information entered in an attempt to gain control of the victims account long enough to issue a bill payment to a recipient they control."
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n0gmqi | During a liver transplant, how do they make a piece of liver function as a liver? | If you donated a piece of liver, how do they start it up? Or is it already functional? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They don't. It functions as a liver because it's made of liver cells. Nothing had to be done to it to make it function.",
"The liver is a filter, in a sense. A very bad analogy is that if you cut a towel in half, both halves could still dry you. There’s not a part of the liver mass that doesn’t do what the rest of it does, I think. Someone smarter will correct me.",
"All they have to do is connect the veins/arteries/ducts to the new liver-piece for it to start working. The liver cells themselves don't know (or care) whose body they're in; they just work on their own."
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n0h1g7 | - When you get a shot with a needle how does the meds stay in the body instead of just coming right back out the hole the needle made? Is it different for IM and IV? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The needle is very tiny and the skin is elastic enough that not a whole lot can pass back through the hole left. In addition, the creation of the hole causes the body to begin the repair process, which fills the area with blood that sort of gets in the way of anything trying to get in or out - which is why some people bleed from injections. There simply isn't enough medication injected to force it's way back through all that, because it's just as easy to disperse throughout the muscle.",
"Different for each type of injection. IV you are pushing the fluid downstream so there is no resistance. IM the fluid is dispersing into the muscular tissue, displace blood and tissue but not enough to produce back pressure. Giving an intracardiac IC injection will sometimes have enough back pressure to produce a bloom in your syringe. Used to be a euthanasia technician.",
"Other people have explained how it works pretty well but I thought I'd throw in the [z-track method]( URL_0 ). It's basically pulling the skin taught before injecting so when it's relaxed the hole from the needle is closed."
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n0hlfa | What prevents our eyeballs from being able to look left and right at the same time? | Edit: not talking about cross eyed. Talking about left looking left, and right looking right | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Eye movement is one of the most complicated aspects of the nervous system. There are 6 main muscles and 3 main nerves that control each eye around 3 axes. As others are saying it's very common for the left eye to look right and the right eye to look left at the same time (i.e. cross-eyed)—this happens when we look at something close to us and is called convergence. However, we are generally not able to make the left eye look left and the right eye look right at the same time. This is due to a connection in the brainstem called the medial longitudinal fasiculus (MLF). This is a difficult ELI5. If you want your left eye to look left, you need the left lateral rectus muscle, which is controlled by the left abducens nerve (cranial nerve VI). If you want your right eye to look left, you need the right medial rectus muscle, which is controlled by the right oculomotor nerve (cranial nerve III). The MLF runs from the abducens nucleus on one side to the oculomotor nucleus on the other side and is activated whenever the brain activates the abducens nerve, so when your brain sends a signal to look left with your left eye, your right eye also gets a signal to look left. Thus in people who are neurologically intact, when one eye moves outwards, the other eye essentially always follows. The MLF specifically can be affected by a variety of neurologic disorders, classically multiple sclerosis.",
"Nothing really. If you hold your finger in front of your nose and focus on it, you're technically looking left and right at the same time, because at this point your right eye is looking left and your left eye is looking right. If you're talking about moving your eyes independently of each other on purpose, that doesn't really work because your brain is trying to control your eye muscles in such a way that they're both looking at the same thing. If they weren't, you'd be suffering from diplopia (double vision) and you'd likely get dizzy. There are certain neurological conditions that cause the eyes not to be looking at the same thing(pointing in different directions), and people suffering from those conditions usually have to wear an eye patch in order not to have problems with double vision. Of course some animals can move their eyes independently of each other, but those are usually animals with the eyes on the side of their heads, so independent movement can give them a wide field of view. For predators that tend to have both eyes facing forward, independent movement wouldn't really help much in expanding the field of view, but you'd lose the perception of depth, so it makes sense that this is not a skill that has evolved in humans, and that your brain can't really make sense of the situation if due to some kind of condition your eyes aren't looking at the same thing. There's no real advantage if both eyes have roughly the same field of vision and you don't get more 'coverage' by moving them independently.",
"Its pretty easy to do it. Look at your nose, now look left. You will feel only your left eyeball moving. concentrate on feeling of that one eyeball moving so your brain learns which muscle it is moving. Now do it the other direction. Keep doing this and you will train your brain to be able to address each eyeball somewhat independently. Next step, freak drunk people out at parties.",
"The Oculomotor system consists of a bunch of muscles controlled by cranial nerve innervation and eye movements. Basically, when you try to look in a certain direction, your brain tries to inhibit the movement preventing that while simultaneously stimulating the movement which allows it. If there’s an object in front of you, for example, if you move both eyes to the left, in order to stay focused on it in front of you you would need to activate the right lateral rectus (moves right eye to the right) and inhibit the right medial rectus (movies right eye left) while stimulating the left eye medial rectus (moves left eye right) and inhibiting the left lateral rectus (left eye left). It is quite complicated and there are also other factors which play into it, but basically our set point for coordinated eye movement is to optimize what we can see and prevent defect in vision. Being able to activate both lateral rectus on each eye (right eye right and left eye left simultaneously) is not really feasible unless you were somehow trained to do so.",
"do you mean looking right with your right eye and left with your left eye simultaneously?",
"It's like trying to turn left and right at the same time with a car. Your brain/nerves are the steering wheel, your eyes are the wheels.",
"Pilots of Apache helicopters are trained to use their eyes independently as one can be used to control the gun while they fly with the other. A friend of a former colleague was a trained apache pilot and said you'd get a horrible headache if you did it for more than a few hours at a time."
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n0ier1 | why does it feel better to walk backwards on a hill? | You know when you get tired walking on an upwards inclined path, then you make a 180 and start walking backwards. Why does it feel nice/easier, albeit temporarily? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'd say it's because you are using different muscles, tendons, ligaments and they probably haven't built up the lactic acid like the muscles used for walking forward on the hill. But I'm no expert.",
"Yeah if it's temporary it's because it's different muscles However, walking backwards up inclines is easier because your legs don't have to move as much"
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n0j1gk | Why is weed not mentally damaging but drugs that use neuro chemicals like serotonin and dopamine bad for you? | I just don’t understand how weed makes you happy but doesn’t have withdrawal effects. Drugs like cocaine, meth, mdma, hallucinogenic etc., you do. | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s not as talked about as pharmaceutical medications, but cannabis does have side effects, some being severe. It can cause anxiety, depression and psychosis in some people, especially those with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. It can also cause cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, which is a severe vomiting syndrome in some longterm users. Just like any other medication, there are side effects from using cannabis as well.",
"not an expert but, weed can be damaging. Some people get psychosis from weed. It can also get Behavioural (non‐chemical) addictions. Some other drugs have chemical addition, where you actually feel ill if you stop using it, but people can still totally get addicted to weed.",
"Weed most definitely has side effects they're just not considered extremely damaging long term",
"I am a heavy weed smoker. Like roughly dabbing an eighth of cannabis concentrate every 2-3 days. People say there are no withdrawal symptoms and that marijuana is non addictive but let me tell you, thats bullshit. The withdrawal symptoms for me include high anxiety and the jitters. I get super fidgety and cant sit still.(tapping my legs and fingers) Theres a loss of appetite that isnt super severe, but a definite lack of interest in food. The most severe symptom for me is probably the temporary bouts of insomnia. I have the hardest time quieting my brain for sleep without the help of cannabis. All of this together can lead to feeling depressed and all around lethargic. For these reasons, every 2-3 months, depending on how I feel, i take a break from smoking for about a week or so, depending on how i feel. Reminds me of what its like to be sober, and helps me break my dependence and lower my tolerance. This probably doesnt answer your actual question, but weed is certainly mildly addictive on some level, and every smoker i know HATES being out. *Edit: The only drug that ive ever enjoyed the high as well as enjoyed coming down and withdrawing is Psilocybin.",
"All I know is that I used to smoke nearly a gram a day and when I stopped cold turkey I didn't feel good for a little over a week. I know everyone is different, this is just my experience.",
"Weed generally doesn't have the withdrawal effects because THC is fat soluble. It gets deposited into fat and then when you stop using weed it slowly makes its way back into the bloodstream over time. This means that it basically tapers itself off. It's also why drug tests can pick up THC weeks later whereas other drugs are gone in a few days."
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n0j6la | how does eating less meat help saving the environment? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Others have mentioned that it takes many times more plant material to feed a cow to get meat for you than it would take just to feed you with the plant material. I often see 10x thrown out there. Another key is that getting the food to the cows requires transportation, which emits greenhouse gas. So it's 10x the plant material, and around 11x the transportation since instead of just transporting the plants to the processing facility and then your grocery store, they transport plants to the cows, then the cows to the processing facility and grocery store. This increase in transportation cost applies to all non-hunted meat, unlike the methane that comes up for cows.",
"Raising animals to provide meat uses a lot of food and water and land over their lifetime compared to how much meat you eventually get to eat at the end. And then even more water to grow all the grain that the food animal needs to eat. In terms of total water, [it's estimated]( URL_0 ) to take 1,590 gallons (6018 L) of water to produce just 1 lb (0.45 kg) of beef. Farming plants to eat also produces way less greenhouse gases than farming livestock (which produce CO2 and methane). Plants consume CO2 and produce oxygen.",
"It has been established that diversity is essential for a healthy environment. Half of the world's land is farmland. 70% of the world's bird population is poultry, mostly chickens. We account for 1/3 of the mammal population by weight, a further 60% is mammals we raise to eat (e.g. cows). The remainin livestock of mammals makes up 4%. We have generated a planet that is made up of humankind for humankind which has decreased diversity. For every large carnivore in the natural environment, there are around 100 prey animals that take up large quantities of space. Every time we chose to eat a piece of meat, we are unknowingly using up large quantities of land. Every person on this planet can not possibly consume meat, there just is not the space. It has been argued in the latest Attenborough film (a life on our planet) that the quickest and effective way to restore some diversity is by switching to a meat free diet. That would allow farmland to diminish (to make room for the Wildlands to thrive again) and diversity would the start to increase again. Simple as that.",
"Red meat especially, creates a lot of greenhouse gases through its production and farming which make the planet hotter. Eating less of it and or more plants helps slow that process down.",
"It will take a little while for the market to catch up but one way eating less meat helps the environment is meat is very expensive to produce from the viewpoint of water resources (not money). It takes something like ten times the amount of water to grow a pound of meat than it takes to grow a pound of grain. It makes sense when you think about it: a person can raise plants to eat, or a person can raise plants to feed to animals so you can eat the animals later. One of these processes is much more efficient.",
"You have to grow 10 calories of animal feed to produce 1 calorie of meat. Instead of growing the animal feed, you could just grow vegetables for humans instead and produce way more calories of food. Or you could grow 1 calorie of vegetables for 1/10th the amount of resources (land, water, fertilizer, fuel, etc).",
"Raising cattle at a large scale consumes significant resources compared to other food, land, and water systems. In Brazil grazing land is more profitable than wild rainforests so ranchers will slash and burn natural forests to create grazing land for castle displacing a vital natural habitat and carbon sink. Depending on what you feed cattle there can be significant environmental impacts as well. If you feed castle food humans can eat (such as corn or grain) many tons of food go into raising the cow, far more than humans will ultimately get to eat when the cow is slaughtered (because much of the nutrients went to keeping the cow alive and growing.) Overall animals turn feed into significantly less food and the practices and conditions we use to mass produce meat displace natural environments and create a ton of waste products as well compared to eating plants.",
"Cows fart. Pigs fart. Chickens fart. Methane is a serious greenhouse gas and more burping and farting animals means more methane. A partial reason for this burp/ fart fest is their diets.",
"It doesn't. URL_0 Should we eat less meat? Yes, absolutely. But it's not the silver bullet climate and animal activists want you to think it is.",
"Just chiming in to say there are a lot of different takes here already, and they’re all right. That’s why meat consumption is such an important issue to consider.",
"Brazil is cutting down the amazon - the lungs of the earth - at an unprecedented rate to clear the ground for cattle grazing and to grow soy for animal feed. Then there's the methane emissions, urine runoff into the environment from factory farms and bird / pig flu outbreaks",
"Its eating industrial scale made meat thats screwing the environment, grass fed cows are just as green food source as cereals or legumes. You cant eat the grass",
"Humans make up 30% of the biomass of all mammals on earth 60% are animals we use to feed ourselves... Cattle, pigs, etc Wild mammals account for **4%** of the mammal biomass on earth. 4%.. Cattle specifically require ridiculous amounts of water to drink as well as large open areas to feed. I forget the figure for fertile landmass covered by farmland but it's also astronomically disproportioned towards the human species and our needs There's something called a carrying capacity of an environment or habitat Humans literally won't be able to keep this up"
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n0jdvp | What do no tear shampoos have? | I remember my mother buying them for me when I was little but I still remember them still hurting my eyes. I suppose they irritate less than the other ones but how do they work? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some people are probably going to comment here saying \"no tears\" means the other kind of tear, as in it won't break your hair, which is just plain wrong. Because if any shampoo is *tearing your hair*, you probably shouldn't use it. Eyes are very sensitive, and normal soap or shampoo has a higher pH than the water in your eyes does. \"No tears\" shampoo has the same pH as our eyes to prevent that strong stinging sensation. But getting anything foreign in your eyes could still feel irritating, so if you apply the shampoo directly into your eyes it might still hurt."
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n0kaom | What's the science behind loss of appetite caused by stimulants (ADHD medication) | When I looked it up, this was the best answer I could find: " increased activity of the mesolimbic reward pathway and elevated extracellular dopamine the nucleus accumbens (Rowley et al., 2000) ". | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Neurotransmitters )like dopamine) cause your brain to see food as less rewarding while you are still on the stimulant. It is less rewarding to your brain because it is already being rewarded by the stimulant"
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n0l0oe | Why do we find certain numbers and quantities unfathomable/unimaginable to our human minds? | A terrible accident happens and 13 people die. It's horrible. 100,000 people die and we can't really comprehend it. The same goes for the vastness of out planet or the size of our universe. We just can't seem to imagine it. How come? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because you don't encounter 100.000 people. 13 is a party. You went to a party and you can imagine the faces of 13 individuals. You don't encounter 100.000 people and you probably don't know 100.000 individuals at all"
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n0lf97 | How do small creatures on the bottom of the ocean withstand that amount of pressure? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pressure on its own does nothing. The dangerous thing is pressure difference. If you have high pressures everywhere then all the forces equalize and nothing happens while if you have a pressure difference then there will be a force pushing from the high pressure to the low pressure which can cause damage. So deep sea creatures do not withstand the pressure but rather just let the pressure build up in them until it equalizes. It does not require much special to do this though and humans can easily survive pressures many times higher then atmospheric pressure. It does become a bit more complicated when dealing with gasses as they will compress under pressure but if you can work around this problem the pressure itself is no problem."
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n0loov | How do people with large sums of money buy things with large price tags? (e.g buying a 50 million dollar boat) | Do they keep that money in a normal checking account like a normal person would? Can they use the same account that buys something for 50 million to buy groceries? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The money is sent to the seller using a wire transfer. This is all handled by banks. They don't generally keep money like that in an account, no. It's tied up in assets they can liquidate, or they finance.",
"Things with large price tags usually require fairly lengthy contracts for their transaction. There are lawyers and other people involved and they'll work out in the contract how payment is to be made. The really wealthy also typically don't own big dollar assets under their own names - there is a bit too much liability, paperwork and lack of privacy in those situations. So these will be held under a family trust or some other corporate structure - the wealthy individual pays a lawyer, banker and accountant to manage the day to day administrative stuff.",
"Sometimes yeah. Although usually for stuff like that you don't just whip out a Diner's Club card. You'll have your accountant wire transfer the amount directly from your bank account to the yacht maker's accounts receivable account.",
"It's not like yacht companies are building these boats on spec (build one and hope to sell it after it's complete). These are custom orders, and would be paid for in stages (progress payments) as they were built. Same would apply for large custom purchases - cars, homes, etc"
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n0m0k0 | What causes things to have no detectable odor? | Why are some chemicals "odorless and colorless" for example? Are there certain properties that lead things to have no odor, or is it just something like UV light that our brains cannot detect? Edit: would it be possible to tell if something has a smell without having a human smelling it? Just by analyzing it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Smell works by chemical reaction with sensory molecules in your nose and the molecules of the source of the smell floating in the air. A steak cooking will give off all kinds of flavours that you can smell. A piece of aluminum doesn't shed aluminum atoms into the air which is why aluminum has no smell. This is true for may rocks, glass, and other hard objects. And volatile chemicals that are odourless are merely so because our noses have no receptor for that particular chemical. Many modern things don't exist in nature so we have not evolved any ability to detect them."
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n0mtl3 | why most of the carnivore dinosaurs are two legged but not four? And most of the herbivore dinosaurs are four legged? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its faster. Carnivores need to be able to catch prey, and running on two legs is just faster. But its also less efficient, so it requires more energy. Herbivores save energy by cruising on four legs, required less calories so eating just plants was all good, and had other defenses to compensate like spines or armored shells. Or a tail that can break the sound barrier when bitchslapping another dinosaur"
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n0nf01 | What is the psychological explanation for large groups of people becoming loyal to a brand such as Apple? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Tribalism. Humans evolved for millennia living in small groups, or tribes. Survival was based on the strength of the tribe. Everyone contributed and it was important to feel a sense of belonging. We wanted our tribe to be the winning tribe because if we lost then our lives were at stake. We would protect the tribe at all costs for the sake of survival. Well, now in 2021, we live in a global society. But people still have a yearning to belong. So since they don’t have a tribe for survival purposes, they adopt tribes to feel a sense of belonging. Why do we care so much about sports teams, beer brands, truck brands, tech brands? The truth is that we just want to feel like we belong and are on the winning side, so we will shit on the opponent to make our tribe stronger.",
"I think for Apple fans in particular it’s an easy explanation: we like it when all our devices work well together?",
"Psychologically, I'd suggest that there is a \"sunk cost fallacy\" effect that causes many Apple, Windows, and Linux users to irrationally avoid recognizing the usefulness of the others. People spend a great deal of time and money on these systems, so it feels bad to consider that we may have made the wrong choice, that maybe we didn't spend our time and money as well as we could have, and this can also make it difficult to acknowledge that the choice we made for ourselves may not be better for others.",
"I feel like there are a lot of different things and the other answers are sort of devolving into \"because people aren't smart like me\". Think about something you like. Maybe it's a sport. Maybe it's a video game. Maybe it's getting hugs from a friend. Ask yourself: do you want to be near people who *like* those things, or people who *don't like* those things? If you really like football, do you think it will be fun to hang out with someone who hates football and spends an hour trying to tell you why it's bad? That's the most basic reason why people group together around brands, sports teams, whether a grilled cheese can have other fillings, etc. People like to be near other people who believe the same things. Our brains figure if we're doing OK, those beliefs must be how we got here, so other people with the same beliefs are probably OK too. With respect to computers in particular though, there's something different at play. Our computers, and especially our phones and tablets, are VERY personal devices. They have the photos that make up our memories on them. They have multiple ways to stay in touch with our friends on them. They have our personal documents and work documents on them. Everybody sets up the apps they like and has their phone set up just the way they want it. It's like having a chair that fits your butt perfectly. That makes it seem pretty painful to change to a completely different device, unless you've specifically taken measures to make that easier. Technical people who value changing to the best device on a whim will specifically favor apps that exist on multiple platforms and can easily transfer data between them. They favor services that let them easily access their data from any device. But a lot of people don't put that much effort into setting up their computers. They just want to come home, look at Facebook until they get angry, then watch some Youtube videos. All of that stuff works just fine on any platform, but they don't care. Whatever laptop or phone they have is the same as the last one they had, and it's one less thing they have to think about in their life. Some people argue that makes them bad people. But a lot of people think people who write page-long essays about how much easier Linux is than Windows and how any idiot can reinstall it on a whim aren't very fun to be around, either. The truth is the difference between those people is whether they have fun tinkering with computers or not. To some people, they're toys. To others, they're tools."
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n0ng0g | If wind moves air particles faster, why does wind feel cold when energized particles become hot? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Even a hot wind can feel cool because it's making the moisture on your skin evaporate faster. Evaporation carries heat away from your skin. If the humidity is at or near 100%, wind won't feel as cool because little to no water can evaporate from your skin.",
"It's not going fast enough. Moving air does gain \\*effective\\* temperature, called \"total temperature\", in proportion to how fast it's going. This is why really high speed aircraft and rockets get so hot. But you need to be going up into the hundreds of mph before it becomes noticeable, way faster than virtually any wind. And definitely faster than any wind you should be feeling. At the wind speeds we experience, the increased cooling from moving air (constantly removing air warmed by our skin and replacing it with cooler air) is much more dominant than the speed-based heating. It also accelerates sweat evaporation by removing moister air and replacing it with drier."
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n0nsg7 | With so many animal species going extinct, how has the Sloth survived this long? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They generally stay high up in trees, away from predators. This is their defense mechanism. Their claws are also very dangerous.",
"They occupy an ecological niche that nobody else wants. It's like your neighbor who lives on a tiny rock in the middle of the North Atlantic with no running water, no sunlight, and no ferry service, then asking, \"Why doesn't anyone invade, he has no defenses?!\". The defense is that it's damn near impossibly to get to him and, if you do get there and eat him...now what? Easier just to go rob the local convenience store."
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n0pnny | How can a company, who only owns a deli in NJ with a combined sales of only about $35,000 in the past two years, be worth 100 million? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the stock market is not a good indicator of anything other than the willingness of traders to gamble. Stock value is almost totally divorced from economic reality.",
"Is this about the high school coach and the restaurant board members? Yeah. That company is *shady* as hell. Not sure what they are doing but it can't be legal. URL_1 URL_0",
"1. Make 100,000,000 shares in your deli (shares are all made up anyway). 2. Sell 1 share to your buddy for $1. Poof, your business is now worth $100 million. As long as no one else sells any shares for less. A company's value is just the number of shares times the price per share. It's got nothing to do with how many sales the business has or what assets it holds. If no one is trading a stock, it's easy to make the value go one way or the other and doesn't cost much."
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n0q73b | How do animals recognise their monogamous partners. | In case of a Zebra I know that the foal recognises the patterns on her mother. But how can birds recognise their monogamous partners, while all the birds look the same. Do they make up a special „handshake“ so they can recognise each other? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"All birds look the same *to you.* All birds don't look the same *to each other.* Birds (and other animals) can tell each other apart as easily as humans can tell other humans apart."
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n0r5w5 | Why do those old-timey wagons have large wheels in the back and smaller ones in the front? | Explain It Like I’m 5: Why do those old-timey wagons have large wheels in the back and smaller wheels in the front? Are they more stable? Do they help the horse pulling it consume less energy/Are they easier to pull? Thanks! | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Large wheels are easier for obstacles, but this also means they describe a larger arc if they are turned to steer. This won't work because there is a wagon body in the way, so they need to use smaller wheels in the front.",
"The wheels are mounted on axles in pairs, front and back. To turn, the front wheels have to be small enough fit under the body of the wagon, at least a bit.",
"Big but light wheels are great for pulling over large obstacles. They were made to switch out pretty easily, and to be easy to repair in many cases."
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n0rywb | Does blood have to reach every living cell in our body? If so how? are there microscopic veins in between every cell? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The smallest blood vessels are called [Capillaries]( URL_1 ). They will not directly reach all cells in the body because oxygen and the other stuff can defuse in the liquid between the cells. According to [this page]( URL_0 ) the average cell is within 1-3 cell width of a capillary. So not to all cells but very close to them. The average distance between capillaries is 0.04mm & #x200B; You have a lot of them and if you put all blood vessels end to end they would go around the equator 2.5 time."
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n0tpwk | Why do we have vivid nightmares when we sleep on our backs? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This seems pretty anecdotal to be honest. I’ve never heard of this. If there is a correlation for you, my guess is it has to do with your normal patterns and the impact seeping on your back could have on them. Certain conditions can be exacerbated on your back like sleep apnea...or perhaps you’re actually sleeping better and are hitting rem and dream state longer and just happen to have bad dreams more than good dreams.",
"I have never heard of this nor experienced this. I’m a side sleeper and lately I’ve fallen asleep on my back while listening to sleep meditations. No nightmares. I’m curious to hear others experiences."
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n0tq9r | why do we sometimes hold an arm up in the air for no reason while we’re watching tv or just laying on our sides? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It feels good right? Sometimes there is too much blood in your arm depending on the position, and when you pick it up the blood pressure goes down a little releasing the tension. That's why you will see in sports when some one gets hurt the pick up the leg. At least I think that's how it works.",
"You try to balance it perfectly to where it doesn't want to waver to any particular side and then try to ignore it to a kind of numbness and it's really cool.",
"Seriously thought I was the only person that did this. It's satisfying almost like stretching",
"I do this constantly. And sometimes I play video games with the controller kind of over my head and behind me. I find it kind of releases pressure or tension in muscles. And the feeling of just holding your arm up over your head just feels.. kinda good? I dunno, it's likely a blood flow thing also. Or like a superman flying holding your fist up while you're laying down thing.",
"No clue! I do this too and my husband thinks I’m a weirdo. He’s right, but that’s a different story.",
"I don't know, but now I have an almost irresistible urge to hold my frickin arm up. Thanks."
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n0trow | In modern day what prevents scientific’s to make Jurassic Park Real ? | Jurassic park came out in 93, but since the technology make a huge advance, in modern day what is the main obstacle to make a dinosaur following the method of Jurassic park ? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"DNA breaks down over time. Like, DNA from 30,000 years ago is usually pretty shredded and unusable. Dinosaur DNA would be at least 2,000x older and more degraded.",
"The part where they find Dino DNA is a bit exaggerated. DNA breaks down over time and the oldest DNA they've found is about a million years old. Dinosaurs were around 66 times before that.",
"the dino's. we simple dont have regeneration tech, we've come far, but not marvel kind of far. also, noone is interested in making a irl Jurassic park",
"Aside from politics, DNA degradation. We’d have to do something similar to what’s in the movies, ie. splicing DNA segments to existing species. We are making a lot of progress on that front with things like CRISPR, but we likely won’t make any substantial leaps in cloning a dinosaur until Elon gets bored of making rockets. Also, politics. Many think we are overstepping their deity’s decree by using the tools they claim their deity gave us. As a result, things like CRISPR and stem cell research progress in a staggered manner dependent on who is pulling the purse strings.",
"Pretty much what everyone is saying about Dino DNA being exaggerated. If you read the book, You would also see that the premise behind Dino DNA was in the extraction of blood from mosquitoes trapped in Amber… A bit of a stretch if you ask me. It’s very likely that such DNA would also break down over time even if it was preserved in Amber. Another thing you would find about setting up that world is that the entire ecology of the Cretaceous period would be absolutely hostile to the ecosystem of the world today. Not only would the animals be from a time that humans are unfamiliar with, but the fauna of such a biome would be extremely hostile to our current environment. Technology wise, we would probably be all right if it was possible. Michael Crichton described the control of the original Jurassic Park environment, and of the collection and mapping of DNA sequences as being used with multiple cray systems, which ever time were these massive super computers that actually existed and were used for large data competitions. Much of that we could do today with quantum computing, but because of the problem with instabilities in the DNA, and having to splice samples to fill the gaps from other animals, it would still be a bit overkill. Furthermore the biggest problem is the control of such environment. In the movie they focused on the park security systems and the presence of eggs outside the breeding lab as the main causes of the problems with the park. However In The original book, Grant found the velociraptor eggs at the same time they stopped the tour cars for the sick triceratops. The problem with the genetics of the frogs having interchangeable genders was only one part of the flaw. But in the book, they are able to communicate with the main control center through the cars and display the computer monitors to them. Dr. Malcolm surmised the problem was with the system. Essentially it was programmed to keep track of a certain amount of dinosaurs and trigger when there was less. **But the problem was that the system was looking for only a certain amount of dinosaurs, 238, and no more. Malcolm suggested that Arnold calibrate the program to track 239, And the computer found that many dinosaurs. And then they kept going higher and higher in the expected number of dinosaurs until they discovered how many more on accounted dinosaurs the system would track**. The problem was that the environment was supposed to be rigidly controlled, but with and ecologically entirely different bio diversity, that was just impossible. There was no way to actually keep the animals from actually breeding on the island. Most of the modern stuff you talk about In the newer Jurassic World movies- Politics, militarization, money, etc.-, Those are just tropes which most people who go to the movies are familiar with, And which basically underscore The core problems with the idea in the first place."
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n0u9d6 | Why does reading make you sleepy? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Just figured I’d give this little tidbit. Teachers nowadays have to teach children the ability of prolonged reading. Usually this is just giving them a set amount of time to read, like 15 minutes. Training this will make reading for longer easier. Or so I’ve been told by my English teacher"
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n0uieg | Why is our sun yellow, and how does it give off heat? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The sun actually isn't yellow, it's white. The sun emits light in all visible wavelengths including X-ray, Ultraviolet, and infrared which combined makes white light. The reason it appears yellow to us is do the atmosphere scattering the light. This is also why it appears different colors throughout the day like Red in the mornings when the sun is closer to the horizon. The suns heat is a byproduct of what drives the sun. It's immense size causes a lot of pressure in it's core which causes the Nuclear Fusion of Hydrogen into helium. This reaction releases energy in the form of heat and light.",
"Our sun is white, actually. It glows through thermal radiation, where objects emit their heat as light. Hotter objects emit more heat as bluer light, so cool objects only emit IR, as they heat up they glow first red then white then blue. The sun is white hot - so hot that it glows white - and our atmosphere tints it yellow by scattering blue light. This is why the rest of the sky is blue but the sun appears yellow.",
"Like people have said, our Sun emits light at all (almost all?) frequencies, but it's not all the same amount. The Sun emits the most light in our visible range (which is why our visible range is the range it is), and its peak intensity is actually at 550nm, which is green of all things. When we see all the visible wavelengths combined, it looks white to us, with a tint of yellow. Different temperature stars produce light that's skewed to one direction or another. Hotter stars will produce a peak intensity that's blue (but still mostly white), and cooler stars will produce a peak thats red (but still mostly white). This happens for the same reason that hot metal will glow red, then orange, then white, and why super-hot welding jets look blue. The heat gets to us through that light. The Sun sends light to the earth, which is pure energy and no mass. This energy is absorbed (some is reflected) and is usually transformed into heat. This is how heat lamps work too, and how a magnifying glass can concentrate sunlight enough to start a fire."
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n0wktt | how do snakes move if they don’t have arms or legs? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They slither, snakes are pretty muscular creatures that have them go down the entire lengths of their bodies so instead of walking with legs they sort of push themselves forward by moving their bodies side to side while also pushing into the ground with teeny tiny reminences of legs by the back of their tails. If you dont know what you're looking for you cant se them. Snakes are also good at expanding just their bodies with the muscle since their whole body is a limb to them, they can push their underside out sort of like flexing and combined with the motion propels them forward"
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n0xhuh | How does smelling work as a sensory function? | I understand why hearing works. Sound waves vibrate parts of our ears that are processed in our brains. And I get how sight works to a degree. But smell (and taste) both baffle me. I don't understand how a part of our body can process something into an odor. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Odour molecules inhaled into the nose is dissolved in mucus. In the dissolved state the molecules react with sensory receptors. Receptor cells convey nerve impulse to the brain through subsequent neurons and it is interpreted.",
"Cells inside the nose called olfactory can detect small amounts of other aerosolized molecules. When they match, the cell sends a signal to the brain. The brain interprets. Different receptors are specialized for different molecules. A few details: The membrane of these cells is specialized for this purpose - the molecules don't get inside, normally. These cells are a type of neurons themselves so they may do some \"pre-processing\" of what they signal to the brain."
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n0xjph | How does the phone compass even work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Phones have a small sensor called a \"magnetometer\". When coupled with the phone's accelerometer, the magnetometer can sense the Earth's magnetic field and tell you which way north is, no matter which way the phone is facing. Of course, this isn't enough for scientific applications, but it can tell you which way you're facing in your favourite map app."
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n0xt4q | How do conferencing programs like Zoom handle so many different screens so quickly, when sometimes single videos in other apps lag? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You're not directly connecting to 9 other people, like 9 different peer-to-peer connections. Everyone has one connection to Zoom's central servers. Zoom puts them all together into one big composite and sends a single stream back to you and everyone else. So from your device's perspective, it's not doing any more work than videoconferencing with a single other person. It's uploading one video stream, and downloading and displaying another. By the way, Zoom got in trouble for advertising that their videoconferencing is \"end-to-end\" encrypted. It's obviously not. They decode all of the video streams on their servers in order to put them together. They could easy spy on you if they wanted to. Edit: well, this blew up! I was basing my information on [articles like this one]( URL_1 ) that talked about how as recently as a year ago, Zoom did not do end-to-end encryption, and in fact they've been [faced with lawsuits]( URL_0 ) over their misleading advertising. However, it looks like I was mostly incorrect about my implication that Zoom processes the video on the server - it sounds like they actually just send you multiple low-quality video streams all packaged together in one connection.",
"The top posts are all incomplete or wrong, so let me try. This is probably more like an ELI10 than an ELI5, but it's the best I can do. First, let's talk about what we want from a good video conferencing system: 1. High resolution (sharp images) 2. Low compression artefacts (clear, undistorted images) 3. Low latency (no lag between you and other participants) 4. Low enough bandwidth (don't use more bandwidth than your internet can support) 5. Low enough CPU cost (don't use more CPU power than your computer has) These parameters are in contention with each other. More resolution takes more bandwidth and CPU. Compression lowers bandwidth, but increases CPU cost and latency. A big part of a good video system is selecting and adjusting these parameters. It's hard because the computer usually doesn't know how fast your CPU is or how much bandwidth you have, so it has to guess and adjust. The main part of your question is about how Zoom can work so well for large group video chats. There are two extra tricks applied here: 1. The video is all sent to a central server 2. The central server can transcode the video (adjust the parameters mentioned above) The reason for the first trick is simple; it's easier for your computer to send the video one place instead of to every participant. The second one is related to setting the appropriate parameters. If someone is looking at 16 participants in a grid view, they likely don't need every video at full resolution since they are so small on screen. The client can ask for a lower resolution video, and save CPU and bandwidth. Similarly the compression can be tailored for each participant. Slower devices and connections can get scaled down video The server has a lot of CPU power and can change the video formats easier than your personal computer could generate all the options. Addressing some mis-information elsewhere: 1. Typically, you won't see all videos encoded into one stream. You can see this easily with Google Meets, where you can use javascript to reposition the videos wherever you like. It's not flexible and the hard boundaries between participants compress poorly. 2. The central server doesn't remove the ability to have end-to-end encryption, but the need to transcode the video does. That's the biggest gain of this strategy, so an end-to-end encrypted video conference would require more resources or have less consistent quality than what zoom can provide.",
"When you have a bad connection or something is going wrong, YouTube (streaming) and Zoom (live streaming) handle it differently: YouTube slows down by buffering, because who cares Zoom slows down by dropping frames and quality randomly degrading so that you can keep up with the stream, because it's \"live\" and generally you don't want to miss what the other person is talking about, or be behind on the stream Not sure I understand your question, but maybe you just don't notice the quality drops in Zoom because they don't *feel* as disruptive as buffering? FWIW even non-live streaming has started to do this. If you watch something with a bad connection on prime, or set a youtube video to \"auto\" quality, it will adjust on the fly to reduce buffering.",
"While not the most technical explanation, it's also worth considering that software's performance is in *a lot* of real-life cases limited by how much optimization goes into making it fast, not actual hardware limitations. So there's a bias which makes all applications just fast enough so they work \"okay\". MS Teams takes over one second to switch from one chat tab, containing twenty lines of static text, to another, also containing twenty lines of static text. Meanwhile, modern computer games draw millions and millions of 3d triangles on the screen in less than 0.02 seconds. There is no technical explanation for this. It's just laziness on the developer side. Computers are insanely fast these days. I think most end-users dont't realize just how fast they actually are, since many applications like to keep a lot of that to themselves, for ease of development.",
"It is much closer to a single video than 100 videos for 100 zoom conference participants. Think of it as a multi-player online video game. All players are connected to one server \"live game\"; and each player is seeing the game and the other players from his/her own point of view as a single video stream. so you are not streaming a video for each conf participant, you are streaming 1 video on what the server has prepared as your point of view of the conference.",
"I think it’s that it’s favoring quantity over quality. Let’s take YouTube, for example. If you open a video and choose 1080p, it’s gonna be 1080p. That means 1920x1080 pixels arive every second, so your connection has to handle that. Now take Zoom call with 10 participants. Every participant is streaming 1080p video, so the same amount of data as YouTube does. Does that mean that Zoom call with 10 1080p users uses 10 times more data? No, because when you see all 10 people, their windows are smaller, right? So Zoom only shows you 192x108 videos of your callmates, which is gonna make the bandwidth the same as one full-screen YouTube video. Once you click on someone and expand his view, Zoom kicks the quality up, showing you higher resolution, let’s simplify this to 1920x1080. But since you see only one person out of 10, the bandwidth is still the same! It’s a bit oversimplified, it might not cut the quality by 9/10 and lot’s of decoding happens too, but I’d say that this is how it works. If I am wrong, feel free to tell me, I will be glad. EDIT: 192x108 is obviously 100 times less than 1920x1080. That’s what 2 years of integrands do to your brain....",
"For starters, conferences aren’t sending you full resolution streams, there’s multiple resolutions available and if you’re not focused on one user then the stream resolution for that user will be substantially lower bitrate and resolution. You can see this with zoom recreations on the news which have a much higher quality video that is actually feasible - in a few films from the last year and in some news videos. Secondly, the bitrate of video streams for conferences are substantially lower overall, than video on sites like YouTube. The same goes for audio. The frame rate is also incredibly low in comparison. It is also potential that the video streams are being muxed (multiplexed) such that the bitrate can be varied for all streams simultaneously. Another method is to combine them into a single feed although that requires an encoder and is not cost effective for large free meetings which these services are hosting a litany of. Lastly it is worth mentioning that webcam video usually has very little interesting information. Most of the video is usually a static background which doesn’t require much information to describe by the encoder. The only thing you really see on the average user webcamera is the face moving very slightly and perhaps a few shifts in position. Even then you’ll probably notice that large movements look jittery because the encoder puts key frames so far apart in time. In addendum to this fact, the colour depth of webcams is usually fairly poor and so the compressor doesn’t have to have such a high bandwidth for colour when throwing out uninteresting information during domain transformations. Conferences are glorified slideshows.",
"Hard to ELI5, i actually worked on a video conferencing system and can tell you a bit more about the setup involved, a few comments covered some things really well, this is a bit more on top (ELI15 maybe): There are multiple encoding algorithms, each with tradeoffs as mentioned, the main issue usually stems from latency: * you have latency transmitting data to the server * latency from encoding the data * latency from sending data from the server to the client. Now, depending on the algorithm, you also get latency depending on how it \"delivers\" the video to your screen: ie: HLS (used widely) creates chunks of a few seconds, and generates a playlist that keeps adding new file chunks to the end. Your player plays those video chunks in order and fetches the playlist occasionally. (this is a bit oversimplified, but essentially correct) Each playlist includes multiple streams with different encoding (resolutions). This is how you switch from 480 - > 1080p on youtube seamlessly: * you click on the toggle to switch resolution * on the next chunk, the player selects the higher bit rate stream * all chunks are exactly the same, so it's perfectly seamless. * this is why it is not instant. There are more advanced techniques, but they are out of the scope of this explanation. So, what does this mean for latency? If you're running 1 seconds chunks, the video will be 1 second + transmission/encoding delays behind. You cannot send the 1 second chunk before it is recorded. So what do we do to decrease latency -- In come newer encoding algorithms that can have very small chunks, 0.2s or less, or just give up chunks altogether. How do these get around encoding? Simple, imagine an image which contains 8 pixels in a square. Imagine those as black blocks, now add another 8 white ones in between. You now have a 4 x 4 pixel array with alternating black and white blocks. You can now have 2 streams, one for the black squares and one for the white. The downside of smaller chunks or no chunks, is variations in speed. Imagine your connection as a water pipe, sometimes the pressure is high, sometimes low. These variations can be buffered by longer chunks, but cannot if chunks are too small/non existent. So, how can we handle these variations? Using the 2 stream example i gave, you request both, if one is more reliable and the other one is dropping data. You play just one, which renders at exactly half the resolution. When both work well, you combine to form a higher resolution image (the pixels are offset, right, so combining both produces the same image with more pixels all in the right place) There are more advanced techniques with how you route the 2 streams, and how you can combine the data. In other words, by doing so, you are unlikely to lose both at the same time, so they can be used to keep a consistent video output, at low latency and when your connection is stable enough, combine both for better quality. This can obviously be extended. This is the main trick for delivering low latency streams with the best video quality and reliability. Hope this helps :). Edit for the curious, without getting into much more complex explanations, there are multiple ways to transmit data over the net, in chunks or as a pipe (websocket), a websocket keeps an open connection to the client and can continuously send data over it. The new algorithms use websockets. Not using websockets also incurs a penalty for handshaking on each chunk etc..",
"Oh you mean like the single video you try to watch on the reddit player? The darned thing takes like 3-4 attempts before its ready to play.",
"Smaller screens mean smaller resolution. Less data to send. Purely hypothetically; 9 1/9th mini-screens is the same amount of data as 1 1th big-screen."
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n0ykkb | Why do scientists say directions such as left/right and up/down don’t exist in outer space? | Lets say you took off in a little rocket ship from Texas, and you saw a cool star “behind” the earth. Isn’t that the direction you would go in? So thats left, right, up and down in space, no? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not really. The concept of *behind* still makes sense, in a relative way (i.e. your ship A, earth B and cool star C are all aligned; someone at A could say C is behind B, or someone at C could say A is behind B). However, once you leave earth's gravity well (or that of another suitably large object), there is no universal up/down/left/right. You could roll your ship 180 degrees while staying on course, and totally invert all those relative directions.",
"You're on this rocket ship heading to cook star. Your bow is pointed at cool star. That's front. What's left? You say your left hand side. What if I spin the rocket ship 90degrees on axis. Bow still pointed at cool star. Left just changed. Same with up down. Mariner ships use port and starboard for this reason. If your facing the bow, port is on your left. But if your facing stern, starboard is on your left.",
"These directions are completely contextual. So what is behind something completely changes depending on your position. Scientific language tries to be as accurate and informational as possible, and telling someone that mars is left of you, just doesn't meet the criteria. Then there is the issue of space itself. Normally down is where gravity pulls us, because we are quite firmly in the grasp of earths gravity and down is towards earths core. So it may change a bit, but if you know where somebody is, you still know exactly what he means when he says upwards. In space we are in constant free fall and feel no gravity, even though it still exists. Additionally, there are many gravitational fields interacting, so down isn't any direction, more your personal perception. & #x200B; Of course there still is left and right in space, it just doesn't get used to describe direction, just like with maps. If you describe someone which way to take on a map, you tell him to go east, not right, even though east is right on most maps. Same goes for space. You go retrograde or prograde, because they are definitive answers, that can be reproduced. If you are on a radio and I tell you to \"go left\", how often do I have to correct to \"your left\" or \"my left\" because the instruction is imprecise, but if I tell you \"go north\", you may need to figure out where north is, but it will always be the same direction.",
"> So thats left, right, up and down in space, no? That's left/right/up/down *relative to you and your current orientation*. But that's as far as you can get. Scientists mean there's no *absolute* left/right/up/down. In our daily lives we all agree on \"up/down\" because we define it relative to gravity. Up is \"against gravity\" and vice versa. But we've all experienced left/right confusion: \"the one on the right...no, sorry, MY right...\" In space, this exact same left-right ambiguity we all face on Earth just applies to up-down as well. Example: Star Trek ignores this problem, ships always seem to meet [like this.]( URL_0 ) Ships facing the same way. What if you flew up to another ship [like this]( URL_1 )? That's just as likely in space! Enterprise says \"why are you guys upside down?\" Warbird replies \"no, YOU are upside down, we're always facing this way!\" The thing is, neither of them is right or wrong. There's no gravity, so \"up\" just means \"above your head\". But that's completely arbitrary, and changes with whatever way you're facing! My last pic could have 10 ships rotated in 10 different angles, all feeling like they're \"right side up\" and the others are rotated. And they're all equally valid. Example 2: You're floating out in space watching the moon orbit the Eatch. Answer this: Is the moon to the left of the Earth? Someone on one side says \"yes\", someone on the other side says \"no, on the right\", someone near the sun looking outwards to Earth says \"no it's behind\", someone elsewhere says \"no it's above\" . Same problem, all those direction are completely dependent on where you are. There is no universal \"up\" in space.",
"\"Behind\" the Earth is relative to your position to the Earth. A descriptor. That works. \"left/right and up/down\" is relative and always changing. There are no fixed points in the Universe. In your spaceship, you are moving, the Eath is moving, the Sun is moving, the galaxy is moving, the Universe is moving everything. So for a brief time, while you're matching the Earth's speed to stay \"behind\" the Earth, you can say you're behind sure, but left? Your left? On a ship you use port and starboard because there's no confusion in what direction you're speaking about. Port is left of the bow. That's relative and useable. Doesn't translate in space because space doesn't have a bow or stern.",
"On earth, we have this concept of “true” direction (for example, the concept of “north”) which is the same no matter whether your looking this way or that, or whether you’re standing on your head or on your feet. Whichever way the North Pole (a fixed point) is, that’s north. In space, there’s no fixed point like that. So you could say “up” is what’s above your head and “down” is what’s below your feet, and similarly for left/right, but it’s all relative to your orientation. Okay, so say you and your buddy are hanging out in space, oriented in a straight line with your heads pointed toward each other, so that if you both reach your hands overhead you can hold on to each other. From your point of view, he’s above you, because you have to look up to see him—but from his point of view, *you’re* above him, because he has to look up to see you. Who’s above the other? Neither one of you is, unless you pick some point in space to serve as a reference point. But there’s no reference point that’s useful for the entire universe."
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n0yqo7 | Why do we need to regulate fever through drugs/ sponging etc. if that's a way our immune system responds to infections etc. | Would the body automatically cool down once it's done fighting that infection? Also, doesn't it interfere in the body's fight against the infection? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If the fever is too high it can actually do more harm than benefit. In such cases it's necessary to use some drugs to bring the temperature down. But nowadays people tend to use medication in cases that don't really require it, which might not be a good idea.",
"> Would the body automatically cool down once it's done fighting that infection? > Also, doesn't it interfere in the body's fight against the infection? Both yes. But that won't help you when your body kills you with the fever before the infection is fought off. Especially nowadays our medicine is good enough that self-destructive defense is not needed anymore to fight off infections."
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n0zlqc | How do peers and leechers in pirating on Utorrent work? Do any other site use them? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you've copied someones homework at school, you are now also a point that someone else can copy homework from, as long as everyone who copies the homework copies it identically (this is done by hashing a torrent's content and checking it against the source) it doesn't matter who you copy from, so if there's a 100 people in the hallway u can copy homework from you can essentially copy the first answer of 1 guy then the next answer from a guy 10 feet down the hall later and when you bump into someone who needs one of the questions you have already copied he can copy from you. If many people seed and few people leech then you can quickly find someone to copy from, if many people leech and few people seed then you'll be in a crowd and things will slow down.",
"Imagine there's a book. It's 10,000 pages long. I have a copy, you want a copy. I sit down, start writing the book page by page for you until all 10,000 pages are finished. We both have the book, and my hand is probably *way* cramped. Right when we finish, Jeff shows up. Jeff *also* wants the book, but now you and I both have a copy. We each agree to write 5,000 pages and Jeff gets their copy of the book in half the time. We're *seeding* the book. Now Dave shows up. You and I look at Jeff and say, \"Cool. Each of us only has to write 3,333 pages,\" and Jeff says, \"Actually, I have to get back home and polish my katanas,\" instead of sticking around to help? Shit. We're stuck writing the same number of pages, and the next person doesn't get their book any faster than you did. Jeff is a *leech*. He shows up, gets his copy, and then leaves without helping anyone else. Torrents with lots of seeders make it easier for more people to get the file they want faster, because more people are helping. Torrents with lots of leechers mean the sharing never speeds up."
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n10m6o | Why can't you refreeze food that has already been frozen and thawed? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"because if you refreeze it, the small ice crystals that form inside the food destroy its tissues. So when you defrost it for the second time it will lose a lot of water and change its consistency. It also increases the bacterial load and oxidizes faster due to damage caused by the cold. Some foods can be burned by the cold and refreezing facilitates this process",
"You can. It is a myth that food can't be refrozen, but it can be dangerous. What matters is how many hours the food is defrosted. Imagine if you buy some raw chicken for dinner but you only use a bit and the next day you freeze the rest. Then a few days later you defrost it, cook half and refreeze the rest. Depending on how long it was defrosted and the temperature it got up to, it could be off. It's often difficult to keep track of exactly how many hours food has been frozen and it can be quite dangerous to eat some foods once they go off."
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n11g40 | Why does MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) improve flavor, and why is it not used everywhere? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Rather than thinking of it as improving, MSG is just pretty good at adding a particular type of flavor. Simplistically, it is what we describe as savory or umami. For any food, certain flavors are sometimes desired and sometimes not. More isn't always better. This flavor is naturally present in many ingredients like tomatoes. Additional MSG might simply not be required. Just like desserts should be somewhat sweet but that doesn't mean simply adding more sugar makes every dessert better, there is a thing as being too sweet. Of course there is also personal preference. Not everyone enjoys spicy or sour or sweet food. So it would be odd to believe that everyone enjoys the flavor brought by MSG in every type of food.",
"It doesn't improve other flavor, it just has a strong \"umami\" flavor itself. So it's basically like salt or sugar in that it adds an intense hearty taste to whatever you put it into. We don't put it in everything because it doesn't taste good in everything. Also it's often considered a cheap replacement for actually making a tasty meal. Like, if you had homecooked fresh lasagna then a frozen lasagna that gets all it's taste from MSG seems like a bad excuse for it. There are also people concerned about MSG being unhealthy, but it's (propably) better than it's reputation. So far no study could find any danger it poses. There might be people who are sensitive but that is also not really clear so far. Any protein based food contains MSG naturally, so your daily intake is 8-12g anyways.",
"Monosodium glutamate is a salt form of the amino acid glutamine which acts as an excitotoxin, which means it tricks the brain into thinking what you're eating tastes good. MSG is a salt form so is typically used in salty foods, although there are other forms of free glutamic acid that are added to food. Some individuals are sensitive to MSG and become ill after consuming it, ranging from headaches to muscle twitching and vomiting because their bodies react to it as a toxin -- as if they have been poisoned. The sensitivity is thought to be to free glutamic acid, where the amino acid split out from the source protein. It is difficult to avoid MSG and its equivalents in the US food supply as it can appear as any of about 75 different ingredients including \"natural flavors\" and is commonly used in condiments, salad dressings, prepared soup, deli meats, the coating on fried chicken, seasonings, many sauces, flavored chips, crackers etc. According to opponents, it causes temporary brain lesions in laboratory subjects. That said, it is considered by the FDA to be safe, most people metabolize it as sodium and a partial protein, and it has been studied for use in the elderly to tempt flagging appetites."
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n12dyx | Why are apple juice and orange juice (fresh squeezed) not as healthy as eating the fruits themselves? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"in addition to what everyone else has said about the nutrients in the skin/pulp, when you drink juice the sugar gets absorbed by your body very quickly, this causes your insulin levels to skyrocket when you eat fruit, your body has to digest all the pulp, skin, etc and digesting all that fiber causes your body to absorb the sugar more slowly over a longer period of time and because of that your insulin level doesn't spike like it does when drinking juice",
"Because you're only receiving part of the fruit. Many of the benefits remain in the physical pulp of the fruit, because juice can't carry the fiber, etc. with it."
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n12vl7 | how do painkillers work? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"By blocking pain signals from transferring through nodes on the nervous system. Ibuprofen blocks pain signals at the source of pain and Acetaminophen blocks pain signals from getting to the brain. Opioids are similar in that they block pain signals throughout the body but mainly at the spinal cord."
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n135pa | Why can't people think of more than one thing at a time? Or can they, and how? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your brain does a lot of things at once. When you’re walking somewhere it’s navigating you, controlling your motion, monitoring incoming sensory information... You also probably often have a top-level train of thought where your brain is engaging the speech center to have a slightly disjointed conversation with itself. This activity is actually using many of the same neural pathways that control speech, and so it can only really churn one thing at a time. It can certainly hop around between topics quickly though.",
"They can think in more than one thing at a time. But not many can focus more than one at a time. Think it as a drawing or painting. Thinking is like a sketch, lot of things come out disorganized. And painting the details are like focus, you need to be paying attention on only that detail."
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n1379q | Why is it common for people to be born with extra fingers/toes, but not with extra vital organs (liver, heart)? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, its not that common for extra digits. But part of the reason comes down to survival. Certain traits can be duplicated without affecting chance of survival. Others not so much. There are also a lot of checks/issues that occur when a zygote/embryo/fetus are developing. If the alteration is too severe it can result in failure/miscarriage/stillbirth. Another part of the reason is a matter of visibility. If you have an extra liver, how likely are you to be aware of it? You would have to be involved in some sort of medical incident/procedure for that to be discovered. Extra digits are noticed just from a once over.",
"The weirdest are people who are born with all their organs on the opposite side of their body from where most people have them [Situs Inversus]( URL_0 ).",
"I'd have to look more into it but an educated guess would be that it's not possible to survive with such a huge abnormality (also, a change such as an extra heart definitely wouldn't exist by itself - there would be other abnormalities that would further decrease the chance of survival) . Therefore the foetus would die long before it would be born.",
"The gene for having more than 5 digits on each limb is a dominant gene so you just need one copy of the gene to have extra digits. Furthermore having extra digits is not usually going to affect survival so it’s not going to be selected out of a population. In contrast, there are no simple one locus genes for having extra organs, and the organs are so important that any small things wrong could seriously affect survivability so such things have been selected against by evolution.",
"They're more common because of how fingers and toes form. You don't have a gene that specifically says \"grow five fingers here.\" What you have is a gene that says \"grow fingers starting here\" which is where things can diverge from the norm. To he source point is at the outside of you hand (at the pinky). The molecules that start finger growth spread out from there getting more diffuse as you move to the inside. On the inside of the hand, levels are low enough for that part to \"know\" it's the thumb and end the process. Anything that changes that balance by affecting the amount of finger generating molecules or the cells sensitivity to them will change the final number of fingers. If you look online you can find plenty of research into this where scientists manipulate the signals to observe the changes. The results range from no fingers to a mirrored hand."
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n13et8 | If carbs are sugar, why cant we just eat sugar? | Or in other words, why can't humans live of a diet made entirely out of sugar. Edit: Changed description like forst commenter suggested | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I mean, you *could* eat refined sugar for a big part of your diet, but there are two problems. One is that refined sugar provides plenty of energy in the form of carbohydrates, but we also need other things such as proteins, fats, vitamins, etc. that aren’t found in refined sugar. Another is that our bodies aren’t adapted to digest exclusively refined sugars - our metabolism uses them up really quickly, and that messes with our insulin levels to the point that we can eventually develop diabetes. It would be a bit like replacing the firewood in your fire pit with a tub of gasoline - it will still burn and provide heat, but that doesn’t mean it’s interchangeable."
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n14prb | Why is the movie/TV streaming landscape so much more fractured than the music streaming landscape? | It seems the music streaming platforms have pretty much everything, while Netflix, Hulu, etc. have far from comprehensive collections. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First, there is a large difference of cost between a movie/series and a music album. Thus, buying a movie/series is usually more expensive. You need to have very big earning to be able to buy everything. Second is licensing. There are many cases in the movie/series industry of an exclusivity license toward one particular broadcaster. Forcing you to pay for that particular broadcaster. Music also does this, but it's usually much less prevalent. As a result, everything is seemingly more available. On a guess, I can also imagine that since movie/series are not something that is consumed multiple times, it usually is something that not many people would buy. Whereas music is something that is listened multiple times. Leading to many more sales overall. The difference would end up being that music gets more revenue from selling as many copies as possible at a lower price, whereas movies would better return from selling less copies at higher price. Licensing is a good way to sell at a higher price."
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n14yfm | Why when you press on your closed eyes is a sort of kaleidoscope pattern effect with blue, green, red, and white sparkles seen? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"You are likely seeing phosphenes, a visual phenomenon caused by mechanical stimuli resulting from pressure or tension on the eye when the eyelids are closed. While temporarily rubbing the eyes is fine, note that pressing on your eyes will cause your blood pressure to decrease through a biofeedback mechanism and is not recommended from a medical standpoint.",
"Your eyes are sensitive to pressure. When you press on your eyes, those little light sensors in your eyes fire off in a similar way as if light was actually hitting them. This tricks the brain into perceiving these signals as light."
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n164cp | when you buy bananas that are green and not ripe, how do they become ripe and yellow when they are not getting any nutrients from the tree but just sitting in your house | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bananas do not ripe due to nutrients they get from the tree ....instead bananas release a gas called ethylene from their stems which make them ripen .... not only bananas ...ethylene can ripen other fruits too if you keep them close to the bananas .",
"The process of fruit ripening is actually the process of them reaching sexual maturity and/or dying. Keep in mind that fruit is meant to fall to the ground and act as a source of nutrients for the seeds inside to grow into a new plant (although it's thought that most fruits are actually sweet because the plants \\*want\\* you to eat them because the seeds aren't digested and mammal poo is a lot more nutrient-rich, but that's for a different conversation). The ELI5 answer: Bananas turn yellow because they are actually breaking down and dying. Yellow is the transitionary state from \"alive\" (green) to \"dead\" (brown).",
"For the same reason they don't need nutrients from the tree to go brown/rot. The banana is converting itself from starchy to sugary",
"They don't need an influx of nutrients because they are just doing 'different stuff' with what they already have: converting starch into sugar, for example.",
"it's like the movies where the hero finds out the power was within him/her all along. The bananas already have all the nutrients inside and they are already working to turn yellow/ripe once removed from the plant. It just takes a while for nature to take its course."
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n16pic | What makes a 0Y person not viable | What genes/characteristics does the X chromosome provides that makes it impossible to a fetus to develop without it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The X chromosome is (unlike the Y) an actual full chromosome with more than 800 genes. Lacking any X is fatal for the same reason as lacking any other chromosome is fatal: missing a bunch of important proteins. [Having a single X, already makes a bunch of disorder way more likely]( URL_0 ), the most common one being color blindness."
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n174e7 | Why are moths attracted to bright lights in the night, yet they never come out in the day? | Does the sun affect the moths? Do they get harmed by UV from the sun? Are there predators during the daytime that harm moths who sleep at night? I want to know the answer. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most moths are nocturnal, so they don't come out during the day. They aren't attracted to bright lights. They use the moon for navigation. By keeping the moon in the same place in their view, they can fly in a straight line. They mistake artificial lights for the moon, and in trying to keep the light in the same place, they end up going round it in circles.",
"Moths are nocturnal. The theory on moths and bright lights is that they have evolved to use the moon/stars as navigation tools. By keeping \"bright light\" in a certain position in their vision, they can navigate. The problem with that system is that it works for lights that they will never reach, but stick a porch light in the mix and they'll just spiral toward it."
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n17xti | Why do we feel 'chills'? What's their genetic purpose or what advantages does it bring? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"“Piloerection” is the technical term. It’s triggered by awareness or the need to warm up a bit. the electricity in neurons fire more intensely. It happens when animals see predators. Chimps’ hair will raise and they will get physical taller and larger when they battle for supremacy.",
"This is a very vague question. What kind of chills? Chills from a fever? Chills from being cold? Chills from something scary? And what makes you think there's a genetic purpose evolutionary advantage to that, or anything?"
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n1aew5 | how does the circulatory system still function if a limb and all of the veins and arteries running through it are severed? | It would be an incomplete circuit, so where does that blood that would usually be pumped there end up? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Contrary to how it's usually depicted, the circulatory system is more a meshwork of arteries, capillaries and veins throughout our body than just tubes that open at the extremities of our limbs So, for example, if a limb below the elbow is severed or amputated, that doesn't mean that the circulatory system is now an incomplete circuit - arteries, veins and capillaries exist in the upper arm as well and the blood flow from arteries to veins would continue there, completing the circuit",
"Blood doesn't have to go through every artery and vein to make a round trip. Just like you can drive from one town to the next without taking evey road in the area, if a road were removed or blocked off you would just take a different route, same with your blood"
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n1aypo | How early Morse code telegraphs transmitted eletric pulse to that specific sound? | What is the mechanics behind it? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The electrical pulse energizes a solenoid (basically a coil of wire) with a piece of metal inside. This causes the iron to be temporarily magnetized (called an electromagnet). This magnet draws another piece of metal to it (that has a spring attached) and when it strikes, it makes that click sound. When the pulse ends, the electromagnet demagnetizes and the piece of metal is returned by a spring making a return click. That sound is simply pieces of metal striking each other.",
"The telegraph did not transmit any sound waves, it was just on and off. The sound was made by the equipment at the receiving end. Initially it would be just the mechanical noise of the electromechanical receivers being in tune with the receiving signal as it was not initially intended for humans to be able to interpret the signals by listening to them. But later on they would add circuits to intentionally make sounds for the operator. The classical simple sine wave sound associated with Morse code today was not actually used on the first telegraphs but were how radio telegraphs would work. The transmitting stations sent out a simple pure sine wave as it would occupy a single radio frequency and be easy to filter out. But on the receiver they would tune to a slightly different frequency. And it just so happens that when you do this you get an oscillating signal as the received signal would fall inn and out of phase with the receiver. And this produced the clear sine wave tone that we now associate with Morse signaling.",
"The electrical pulse does not make the sound. What it does is powers a coil that becomes a magnet and pulls a small metal tab down. The click is the sound of the metal tab, hitting the metal core of the coil. The tab is mounted to a spring, that returns the tab to the up (or open) position when the electrical pulse ends."
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n1b23e | Why does reheated pasta contain more resistant starch? | [Just watched this Food Theory video]( URL_0 ), and I was wondering why, I might've missed something in the video, I'm not sure, but why? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When the starch cooks the first time (gelatinizes), the molecule changes shape. When it then cools, the new shape crystalizes (locks into a rigid pattern with other starch molecules). When it is later heated again, it takes more energy (heat) to break apart that crystal than it did to cook the starch molecule in the first place. It is also harder for your digestive process to break apart that crystal. Hence, the resistant in resistant starch. This is also why refrigerated bread or long grain rice feels really hard. Tip: Store bread either in the freezer or at room temperature. Starch crystals form (retrograde) faster at refrigerator temperature than freezer temps. Reheated frozen bread will taste much fresher than reheated refrigerated bread. To soften hard leftover rice, sprinkle a little water on it before microwaving. Heat it longer than it takes to get hot; remember that it takes more heat to break up those crystals. Use medium or short grain rice for cold salads etc. Their starch structures don't retrograde as much. There are other forms of resistant starch and way more to it, but this is my party small talk on the topic"
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n1b7hh | How exactly does software decay work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Software doesn't really \"decay\". If you don't touch it, it won't change ever. What can change is the environment in which the software is operating. Say a software for doing tax declarations will slowly become ever more obsolete as laws and regulations change. Left unchanged, the software will also be left behind by it's competitors who keep modernizing their products. The software starts feeling \"old\" in comparison. Software can also become obsolete, when it's written with technologies that nobody is learning anymore. The software keeps working for a while, but when something breaks, there's nobody around to fix it. Another form of \"decay\" happens during (long term) development. Due to budget and time constraints changes are often \"bolted on\" in the quickest way possible. Little regard is paid to how well the change fits into the original architecture of the software. Over the years the source code starts \"loosing\" it's cohesion/organization/architecture and eventually becomes impossible to maintain. It's a human made problem, but because it happens \"unconsciously\" it feels like \"decay\"."
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n1bcj3 | What happens to a splinter that you can’t remove from your skin? Does your body eventually break it down? Does it just live in there forever? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It will typically not break down, but instead get walled off and/or work its way out naturally. URL_0",
"A typical splinter which isn't able to be removed will eventually work its way out as the skin sheds layer by layer. Alternatively your body may react to it, and it will become surrounded in puss and then pop like a pimple.",
"My older brother once shot me point blank (execution style) in the upper lip with a bb gun. We were too scared to tell our parents so I said I didn't know how I cut my face. I pretty much forgot about having a bb in my lip until 10 years later an army dentist was checking my gums and was like WTF is this?",
"I got a splinter deep in the soft skin behind my knee when I was a kid. My Dad tried to get it out and got most of it but a small piece (grain of rice) got left in. I forgot about it for decades. After all its out of view behind the knee. Then as a middle aged adult one day I felt a sharp pain behind the knee like being stuck with a pin. I felt bakc there and i couod feel the end of the long lost splinter poking out. I got it with tweezers. It was now a bit bigger and a grey/white calcified thing. I wish I could say I kept it but that would be just weird",
"It usually will work its way out or cause pain. Some eventually require surgery. You're body doesn't break down wood.",
"I've got one still in my toe from when I was a little lad. The skin just healed around it, and you can see it lurking below the surface, like a manatee.",
"Johnny Herbert (Racing driver) had a horrid crash once where he almost lost his foot as it was reportedly left dangling by a thread - In a podcast interview (Beyond The Grid) he talks of how some time later he would have pains and small pieces of grass / debris pushing out of his foot. This sounds pretty disgusting to me! This however is a very extreme example I'd say. So, while I can't comment directly on the splinter I believe that there isn't a way for the body to break this material down and layers of skin will grow over that which doesn't get pushed out on its own.",
"Not exactly a splinter but I've got a bit of a pencil tip that you can still see in my palm from 20 years ago. I was in 3rd grade and I got poked with a pencil and it broke off. Soo maybe it'll just stay there.",
"I once got a splinter in my hand while doing some wood staining. Most came out but a tiny bit stayed in. About 20 years later that tiny bit had worked its way out, but I still have a spot in my hand that looks a bit like a mole, except that it's tinted green. I left the tiny bit in because it was really too small to even be noticeable and didn't hurt. It didn't hurt on the way out either and it was just by accident I noticed it was coming out. I think I would just have realized one day that the black tip was gone.",
"I have a scar on my right middle finger from a splinter I got my senior year. Was running my hand along an old wooden fence and a bit broke off in my finger. The whole piece that came off the fence was several inches long, but the piece that remained in my finger was about .25 inches. Quite big for a splinter, and it hurt bad. I couldn't get it out + stubborn teenager, it remained a part of me for weeks. I would squeeze it so much that it nearly became a habit. Then, one day as I was sitting in class, I gave it a squeeze; the fucker shot out of my finger and fell onto my desk. It was gross, but it relieved so much pressure. The scar is neat. Forever changed my fingerprint. I'd add a photo but I'm not well versed in the reddits.",
"I had a piece of glass impale my forearm and almost went all the way through. Being young and ignorant of how to deal with medical issues I pulled it out myself (which caused a torrent of blood to flow out and almost made me pass out). A small piece of glass was stuck deep in my arm and the doctor that was helping me told me that when foreign material gets stuck inside you your body will encase it in calcium to protect itself from whatever is there. (This was years ago so I’m not 100% if it calcium that it wraps it in or something else... or if the doctor was just wrong, which I hope not).",
"One day my foot started hurting whenever I would bear weight on my heel. Upon inspection I found a small raised area of skin. I took my knife to it and scraped away at the skin. And pop. A broken part of a grass sticker elected itself from my foot. Relief",
"I had a large flat piece of wood get jammed under my thumb nail when I was younger and after a few months it eventually was pushed back out",
"I have no idea what all the possibilities are for that hidden splinter but I know this is one of those possibilities and it keeps me awake at night. URL_0",
"I had this happen! I was skiing, dodged a fallen skier, was unable to corner, skidded off into a ravine, bashed my hand into a tree, and had a big cut on the back of my thumb due to a piece of wood stabbing me and breaking off. I didn't realize there was anything in there, and it healed over. then, months later, it just kinda...worked its way back out. I think the layers of skin underneath keep growing to replace the outer layers, and eventually that created enough pressure to push the wood out (piercing the skin from the inside out). It sounds a lot more painful and gruesome than it was. It hurt a bit, then it healed over again, but I still have a big scar marking the spot. Source: it me. 7th grade.",
"I stepped on a branch barefoot and a small thorn went into my foot. I tried to get all of it out and thought I succeeded. The wound healed up and everything seemed fine. Two years later a large lump formed in my foot and over the next few weeks the lump slowly moved to the top of my foot and became what can only be described as a giant zit. Eventually I popped it and pulled out a small thorn. That thorn had been sitting inside my foot for 2 years until my body randomly decided to push it out the top.",
"Nope. Not me. 6th grade. Slid onto a wooden park bench. Through the shorts into my ass. I could barely walk it was so deep. Told folks. Didn't believe me. Even inspected it. It lived in my butt for an entire year. I called it my little lumberjack. Im a total bottom now.",
"My neighbor got into it with someone at a bar. An hour later he was driving home on the freeway and a car pulled up along his and they used a shotgun to shoot him in the face, shoulder and arm. Months later he would get a bb that popped into his mouth from inside his cheek. They would also pop out of his elbow.",
"Finally something I have experience with. I was getting rid of fence posts and got a splinter. I didn't think anything of it because it only looked like a tiny speck of dirt. Everytime I answered my work phone with that hand it was excruciating but I thought I was just being a baby about finally after I think like a week or so it worked itself out of my hand while in the shower and it was huge. I was surprised at long it was given the thickness of my hand; I thought it would have gone through. Either way it was the coolest/creepiest injury ive had, the pain was instantaneously gone. I still have some scar tissue on my palm from it.",
"About 30 years ago I was riding my bike home from school. While breaking on loose gravel my front wheel locked up and I went OTB. I was going pretty fast and slid on the stones for about 15 feet. I had embedded stones in both hands, and forearms. It took more than one round to get everything out. Fast forward about six months after the accident and I notice a hard cyst like object in my hand. The doctors took x-rays and I had a foreign body in each hand, that was most likely left over from the accident. They were not near anything so the doctor didn't want to operate if I wasn't in pain so they just left them in and said come back if it becomes a problem. Fast forward again to now and I've never really had any pain from them. I think they've gotten smaller over the years, but I'm not sure. I'd probably freak TF out if I were to wake up one morning and found one sticking out of my palm though."
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n1bfp9 | How do directors/producers/or movies find look alikes for people ? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Casting agent put out a casting call for people that match the actor's appearance. The casting agent and the director interviews the candidates and choose one that looks similar enough."
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n1bg4v | Why is polar ice melting so much if tempurature has risen around 2 degrees and the average temp at the poles staying relatively the same? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The average temperatures at the poles is a bit misleading. Snow and ice does not melt faster at -36 then at -34 degrees. But temperatures are higher at the edge of the ice cap where the snow and ice is actually melting at a much higher rate then before. The reason why the temperature increase is not universally distributed is a bit complex as the weather patterns change. This is why people refer to it as climate change rather then global warming because people get the impression that everywhere gets universally warmer. And in the case of the ice caps they are not as affected by the warmer temperatures as the ice edge. In fact we have observed increased snow fall on the ice caps due to increased humidity from the higher ocean temperatures. However this is not enough to offset the increased melting at the ice edge. And once the ice edge gets closer to the center of the ice caps they will get warmer as well."
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n1bidl | How do they do "age progression" with photos? What do they base their predictions on? | I'm talking in general, like when you see age progression done to old photos of missing persons. Is it some kind of AI stuff? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Faces age in pretty predictable ways. Things like noses and ears grow at certain rates. Fat sits differently with age, stops being in the cheeks for example. Gender differences start to show after puberty, wider jaw for boys and so on. They can take a picture, put markers at key areas of they face and add how the years would change the face. Im sure there's a very fancier way and explanation of the computer programs but that's the simple idea behind how it works"
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n1cfvv | What is ray-tracing and how does it work? | I keep seeing stuff about ray-tracing but when I look it up I don't under what I am reading. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In computer-generated graphics, one of the tricky bits is to simulate lighting. To keep rendering fast, early game graphics would make general assumptions like \"light comes from here\" then brighten or darken textures depending on how directly they faced a light source and how far they were from it. As technology improved, more advanced algorithms could be used, but they often still had short-cuts to keep rendering times down. While these algorithms had results that looked good enough for most cases, they still didn't simulate how light really works in real life. In real life, surfaces bounce, absorb, and refract light. Trying to simulate this in computing is called ray-tracing (ie. tracing the path of rays of light as they bounce around an environment) and has traditionally been extremely computationally expensive. If you read about the history of old Pixar films, they would take hours to render each frame of film as they used ray-tracing to illuminate their models. But now we're finally to a point where the technology of hardware and software can perform some degree of ray-tracing in real time, allowing it to be used in games or other real-time modeling simulations."
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n1cg5a | Why do atoms have different attributes when they are all made of protons, neutrons and electrons | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because all those are organized differently creating different properties the same way two teams in sport X can play very differently the game while still playing the same sport",
"I'm no chemist, but from my understanding, each element's unique properties are due to the number of each subatomic particle in their makeup. For instance, carbon forms a lot of covalent bonds easily because it has 4 valence electrons, while the noble gases don't chemically react much because their valence shells are \"full.\" Additionally, certain atoms are \"heavier\" than others because they have more protons or neutrons in their nucleus. Anyone who knows more than me, feel free to correct or expand on anything I've said."
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n1ciyz | Do pets understand that the lights in our house are artificial or do they think the sun rises everytime we turn on a light at night? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Anyway, they kind of do. Their circadian rhythm still follows the sun, not our lights. So one assumes that since they ask their owners to go to bed around the same time every night (trust me, they do ask if you’re up late), and they can turn off the lights (I’ve seen both cats and dogs do this), they at least partly understand daytime/nighttime separate from artificial light.",
"Your question assumes that pets understand the sun, or understand the difference in natural and artificial light. I would assume they don't know the difference or care. All they know is they can see better now, and that's all that really matters to them.",
"My cat not only knows the light is artifical, he knows how the switches around my house work to control them.",
"I don't know the answer to that, but I do suspect that my dog is sophisticated enough to *pretend* that she thinks the bathroom light is dawn, so she has an excuse to do her \"let's go for a walk\" dance."
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n1cno1 | Why is it that songs we don’t like get stuck in our head, not the ones we like? | This has always puzzled me. It’s always the songs I don’t like that get stuck in my head, but the ones I like get stuck in my head | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Certainly not my case. I get a song i love stuck in my head so much that i bssically have to listen to it on repeat until im sick of it and therefore stop thinking about it.",
"If a song is repetitive in nature, or you only hear a portion of it, your brain struggles to finish it on it's own. If you don't knkw rhe song very well, or are trying to ignore it, it may persist indefinitely."
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n1d5o7 | Where do radio stations buy the rights to play their songs | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They can play anything they want, they just have to pay a fee for each song they play. Every single time they play a song they pay a fee. They get essentially a big license to play whatever, as long as they remit payment to the proper people. There are companies out there (3 main ones in the US) which collect the payment on per-play things like radio. A radio station makes a list of all the songs they played, and sends it to one of these companies, along with the payment. That company will then pay out the song owners. The actual cost of a single song played on the radio is complicated though, so lets leave that out."
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n1d6tu | How does ray tracing work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Former game developer here, So you have 3D points, 3 points make a triangle (polygon) in 3D space - the smallest primitive object you can make. Everything can break down into terms of triangles. The surface of that triangle also so happens to describe a 2D plane that goes on to infinity in that 3D space. The surface of the triangle, that plane, faces a direction - we call that a \"normal vector\". You can think of it as an arrow, pointing from the surface of the triangle, and for the sake of argument, just presume it's at a right angle to the surface, it points straight out. (It doesn't always, we can tweak it for different effects.) The points of a triangle can all have their own normals, too, and can have more than one normal if that one point is shared with multiple adjacent triangle. Then you have matrices. These are numbers, very complicated numbers with multiple parts. Remember complex numbers, from high school algebra hell? a + b*i*? Shit like that? That's not an equation you *solve for*, notice there isn't an equal sign anywhere. That mathy thing is a way of representing a kind of number. Matrices are also a kind of number, and they come in different sizes. For 3D games, most matrices have either 9 or 16 terms. We can write them in a handy notation of rows and columns, in tabular form. So you'll see 3x3 or 4x4 grids of numbers, those are matrices. A 3x3 matrix represents, mathematically, 3D space. Literally the whole universe. You can rotate it, scale it, or transform it - maybe your space has a slant to it... A 4x4 matrix has X, Y, Z, and W. W is interesting, it's a translation. What it is, is a 3D matrix with a position. We're talking ONE UNIVERSE relative to ANOTHER UNIVERSE. This is very useful, because if your torso is represented by one matrix, then your arm can be represented by another matrix. Now you can describe how your arm is positioned relative to your torso. And when you rotate your arm matrix, the whole arm universe rotates with it, along with your arm in it. The torso remains unaffected. When you rotate the torso matrix, it moves the arm with it, because the arm is relative to the torso. We build whole hierarchies of matrices, one relative to another, and build up a whole universe. You can draw the relationship like a tree. When a character is standing there and their head is moving around, their head matrix is changing, and then you can multiply the matrix against all the points that make up the triangles of the head, and now you know where in the universe the head polygons go, and their orientation, and everything. And matrices multiply against each other, too. You have one matrix at the top, typically your camera, and that's the center of the universe. And then you start multiplying from the top of the hierarchy down. So all the map geometry, all the model geometry, all the items, you multiply them from the top of the hierarchy down to the bottom, that's how everything gets placed in the universe. Something moves, and everything relative to it moves too, requiring some recomputation. To render your 3D space, the camera is a matrix that skews the universe, things further away are smaller, because the universe is actually geometrically smaller the further away it is! Then the matrix also collapses the Z axis, making this skewed projection flat. Because your screen is flat. So in the end, you have all this 3D geometry being transformed into 2D geometry. So now you have some light source. It typically boils down to a single point of light. It has color and intensity. You need to \"cast a ray\", which is a line with a starting point and a direction, and it goes on forever. You need one for every pixel on your screen. You point it outward into your universe - you cast it, and then do some math to find out what's the first physical thing in your universe it intersects. It's going to be a surface, and that surface is going to have a lot of information, like \"material\" properties, which are just color properties, and textures, which is more color for blending, plus all this normal data we talked about earlier. These days, every pixel of a texture has it's own normal. These normals work into the maths to decide just how that ray, is going to reflect off. There's also some maths behind if or how the ray splits, because the color on that surface you've first encountered is the sum of all the light that shines on it. But the sum of all the light that shines on it includes all the surfaces that are shining their light onto it. The color of my hands as I type this is more than just the sunlight, it's the air, the clouds, even the walls in my room which are illuminated by the sun, the light bouncing off my hands and into my eyes. So you need to trace rays from that first intersection outward to their next intersection, and outward again, and again, until all the rays find themselves back at a light source. You know how pool is a game of geometry and angles? That people bounce billiard balls off the walls and other billiard balls to score pockets? Same thing. The pool que is the initial ray cast, the first billiard ball is the first intersection, the bouncing and scoring in pockets are the last rays finally hitting light sources. Now that you know the paths the light took to get to your pixel, you can sum the colors and intensities and do all the blending to end up with the final color for that pixel. Now, for a 1920x1200 monitor, just do that 2,303,999 more times, 60-120 times a second.",
"Ray tracing uses math to trace linear \"rays\" out from the camera and off the surface of objects back to a light source to determine the color of pixels on a screen. It traces a line out until it hits an object, determines what direction light would be coming from to reflect back toward the camera, and follows that path, repeating until it finds where the light is coming from. This is a method that is a closer approximation of actual physics of light and vision, and can produce much more realistic images. However, this is more computationally complex, and we are only recently achieving the necessary technological advances and optimization techniques to make this practical to do in real time.",
"You have a dark room. In it is a tinted copper mirror 45 degrees to the left. You shine a thin beam of white light at it. You can see on the mirror where it hits, and the point on the left wall where it hits and now has a slightly different color due to having reflected off of the tinted copper. You just traced one ray. It wouldn't be too hard to program this, just one light source, simple angle of reflection, and accounting for the tint of the reflective surface affecting the light when it hits the second surface. It would be done on your computer pretty much instantly. Now make the scene more complex, say a car sitting in the room. And instead of one thin light beam, you have a normal light source, and you track that light source as millions of thin light beams going every direction from the light source, and you track their reflections off the car to the surrounding environment, and you track their reflections from the surrounding environment to the car. You can go further and track more reflections (floor to car to ceiling) and account for what percentage of light gets reflected off of each surface. If you trace your reflections pretty far out and do a high number of rays, this can look quite realistic. This takes intensive CPU work simply because the number of rays and reflections that has to be calculated is insanely high."
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n1e6ei | How La Croix flavors it’s water? | Ingredients: “only carbonated water, naturally essenced.” What is the natural essence?? EDIT: Hoping I picked a close enough flair | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The FDA requires most ingredients in a food product to be listed by their actual name. However, the names of some ingredients can be hidden under the groupings \"natural flavors\" or \"artificial flavors\" - depending on the exact production method used to obtain those ingredients. 99% of the time, if a company is able to list an ingredient as a \"flavor\" then that's what they do, but again, they don't have to. They can use the actual name for the flavor instead. Some ingredients have stupid actual names. One of those is \"essence\". \"Essence\" is the industry term for fruit flavors derived from a specific method of production (basically they subject the skin of the fruit to very high temperature/pressure steam and concentrate the fluid that comes out). That resulting concentrate tastes like the parent fruit but doesn't have any sugar in it. That's what Lacroix uses to flavor their drinks - its the same natural flavor that is found in a lot of other foods. In fact, Lacroix used to list it as \"natural flavor\" on their ingredients label. But they've gotten clever and realized that \"essence\" sounds healthier than \"flavor\" and since the flavor itself is actually named \"essence\" they're allowed to call it that.",
"Natural essence is a clear liquid created by heating items such as fruit and vegetable skins, rinds, and remnants at high temperatures, producing vapors. These vapors are condensed and then sold by the barrel. URL_0 It’s just a commodity industrial flavouring that you can buy from many industrial food suppliers. It would not fit most people’s definitions of natural."
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n1eu5h | what causes inflation, and what is the purpose of it? | If everything is rising at the same rate, then why not keep prices and wages at the same amount without increasing them? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Currency and wealth are two different things. Wealth is any that have value for human (natural resources, products and services). Currency is just a representation of that wealth for easier trading. There is a relation of supply and demand between currency and wealth. The demand is the wealth, because the more wealth you have the more you want to trade it. The currency is the supply, because you need it to trade your wealth. Wealth in general will increase over time. More population to work, better technology to produce more, etc. So if the wealth increase, but your amount of currency stay the same, the value of that currency will go up. That is called deflation and it's not good for the growth of the economy. So the better option is to add more currency overtime to the economy to counterbalance this wealth increase. We add currency in an indirect way and it's really hard to estimate how much wealth was added to the economy, so it's basically impossible to always add exactly the same amount of currency as the wealth increased. So instead we add more currency than the wealth increased, which create inflation. The optimal target is around 2% inflation. This way with variation it should rarely go into deflation and if you keep control of your economy, you shouldn't get too high in inflation, which would be a huge problem for the economy too. At 2% of inflation you stay in a safe zone and in addition you incentivize people to invest their money. Invested money is circulating money. It's used to buy a new house, build a new factory, etc. It create work and growth the economy faster than if we would just keep our money hidden somewhere."
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n1fhyf | When you get your Blood drawn or get an IV, how to does the vain or artery repair itself from the puncture wound? How does it not bleed internally all into the body? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The same way it would heal if it was just a cut, platelets in the blood cause it to clot at the site of the wound, and stop bleeding, then the cells that make up the blood vessel's lining replicate and fill the gap. By the way it does bleed into your body, that's what a bruise is."
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n1gll9 | How does ear damage physiologically happen? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A couple different ways. The simplest to imagine is rupturing the eardrum. It's pretty simple, a too loud sound or explosion vibrates the eardrum so hard that it tears. Then, you can have dislocation of the 3 ear bones, which stops sound from getting transmitted. This can happen from fracturing nearby bones, or a separate blunt trauma. Then you can get the death of the hair cells in the cochlea, caused by sustained listening to something that's too loud. That will also cause hearing loss. You can also have nerve damage along the way too."
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n1hjlz | Why is it safe to store canned spaghettios meatballs at room temperature? | I feel like it should cause foodborne illness, but I am interested in canning and would love to figure out how to store my own spaghetti and meatballs and room temp safely. Thank you!! | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You boil the cans after they’re sealed for quite a long time and that kills whatever would make you sick in the can. That also vacuum seals the can which is why the lids on preserves with lids pop up after you open them. In farm canning (my only experience) the cabs that pop after means they didn’t seal properly and you have to eat those ones first and keep them in the fridge. Edit: forgot to add, the boiling kills the bad stuff in the can and then they’re sealed from the outside air. As long as nothing else can get in then the food inside will keep at room temp for a long time.",
"Meat needs to be pressure canned. You can't just use a boiling water canning bath. That is for highly acidic or sugary foods, where bacteria has a harder time growing. But once it's been pressure canned, all the bacteria in it will be dead and the seal will be closed, preventing new bacteria from entering.",
"Because they've been pasteurized. Named after Louis Pasteur, canned goods are exposed to high heat after being sealed. That kills all of the bacteria that would spoil the food. The sealed vessels are then shelf stable. Home canning works the same way You seal the vessels, usually mason jars, submerge them in a hot water bath and boil them. This kills all of the bacteria present and makes the canned goods shelf stable.",
"just to clarify, home canning is generally not the same as industrial canning. Botulism toxin can survive your average 212degree sterilization. It *cannot* survive PH below 4.6. So if your food is not \"highly\" acidic as most simple fruit preserves are (or you dont add something to make it highly acidic, such as you would for tomato sauce), you will need a pressure canner that can provide higher temperatures.",
"After the food is sealed inside the can, the can is heated up and held there for a while. This will kill any microorganisms inside the can. Microorganisms of various types are the main cause of food spoilage and food borne illness, so if there's nothing living inside the can, it can sit at room temperature. > I am interested in canning and would love to figure out how to store my own spaghetti and meatballs and room temp safely. It's basically the same principle, but with simpler equipment. You take glass jars, put your jam, or spaghetti sauce inside the jar, and then put a special lid on the jar. You then put the jar in a pot of water, and simmer the jar for a certain amount of time. This kills anything inside the jar. As the jar heats up, air in the jar expands and pushes its way out of the jar. As the jar cools, the air contracts, creating a partial vacuum, and sealing the jar."
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n1hyz4 | Why do we feel sick when reading in a moving car? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your body has evolved many different systems to tell it if it is moving, stationary, etc to alert it in case of, say, falling out of a tree while asleep or being dragged by something while being unable to see. When you're in a vehicle of any kind, especially as a passenger, these systems can go a little haywire because they all sense motion that you aren't causing. Add to this looking at a stationary object that you must focus carefully on - like a book - and this can cause a similar feeling to being dizzy. This is because you have systems conflicting. Your inner ear, for instance, screams \"WE'RE MOVING! WE'RE SPINNING! WE'RE ACCELLERATING AND DECCELERATING! EVERYTHING IS MOTION, AND VERY FAST!\" The rest of your body is going \"No, wait. Everything is still. We're sitting and reading a book in a stationary seat, we shouldn't be detecting movement. What's wrong with you?\" The brain sees these conflicting signals and can go \"SOMETHING IS WRONG! PANICK!\" and start sending out adrenaline and other things which makes you nauseated. It's even why \"dizziness\" happens. If you spin enough then stop suddenly, the fluid in your ears keeps spinning and swirling, telling your brain that you are still spinning in some way, so the body has trouble orienting itself without relying on the eyes and other sensations.",
"Only some people do. its not totally clear why and its still being researched. But studies did find something really interesting: people who have vertigo related to inner ear problems do not get motion sickness. They just don't. So whatever the issue is, it seems to be related to that system."
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n1i2yi | Why do we hold our breath while working out when breathing is vital to a workout? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Holding your breath while you tense your muscles increases your intra abdominal pressure, stiffening your core, and allowing your extremities to work from a more solid base."
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n1i49q | Why is space in our solar system cold, but the planets are warm? | If the sun warms planets millions of miles away, how come space around those planets isn't heated like the planets themselves? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Heat moves from one place to another through three methods: 1. Conduction - hot atoms hit less hot atoms and transfer their heat from the hot atoms to the less hot atoms, which hit other atoms transferring their heat continually. 2. Convection - hot atoms physically displace colder atoms 3. Radiation - heat in the form of photons are emitted from a hot object, which travel through space until they hit another object, making it warmer. In space, where there are very few atoms, options #1 and #2 don't happen, leaving only option #3. But option #3 requires there to be something for the photons to hit to warm up. This is why planets (which are struct by the photons emitted by the sun) warm up but the space in between (which has nothing to heat up) is cold. Interestingly, because of this, one of the main considerations of space craft is how to get rid of excess heat. Even though space is \"cold\" it has no medium by which you can easily move heat from one place to another. TL;DR \"space\" is cold because it is devoid of anything to be hot to begin with.",
"Space itself is not cold. Objects in it generally, but not always are. Small objects in space are not protected by atmosphere and have low thermal mass, so they can radiate hat away. However, if an object in space gain heat, such as absorbing sunlight or due to engine inside a craft, getting rid of heat becomes a challenge. If spacecraft has damage to heat radiators and to its ability to efficiently generate power (inefficiency means more energy released as heat rather than providing power), crew will have to choose between starting life support system from energy and dying or overheating the craft and cooking alive.",
"Absorbed and reflected heat from the sun. The ozone layer that helps retain that reflected heat via greenhouse effects. The closer you are the warmer you get. In empty space there’s nothing to reflect off of so the light keeps moving forward."
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n1i9y9 | Why do people in their 70s’/80s’ voices sound different than when they were in their 30s/40s? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In addition to these comments you'll also find those with weak lungs (ie: smokers, asthmatics ect.) Will have weaker voices because of oxygen level.",
"Weakness in the muscles of the vocal folds alter the sound of your voice and because we use our voices a lot, the muscles weakness can lead to fatigue also altering the sound of your voice.",
"As you age your muscles change in density and strength. The vocal cords are just a muscle. The older you get the weaker and less flexible your larynx becomes. This can cause your voice to change. With women, menopause also takes this a step further in the psycicpsychicalal changes."
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n1ivwp | Why are steroids dangerous? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In a broad sense: your body likes to maintain a certain balance (called homeostasis). To maintain this balance, it has a lot of mechanisms, including things like hormones which help regulate **lots** of things in your body, such as muscle growth. Adding in something external tips the balance of your body, pushing certain systems into overdrive, while suppressing others. In the short term, this can get you things like bigger muscles. In the long term however, you are not **just** affecting your muscles, but a whole lot of other things, which are now being pushed out of whack in ways that can damage your health, such as shrinking your testicles. It's like overclocking your computer: it runs faster now, but it also overheats, which will eventually damage the processor."
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n1j1k8 | Why do lab diamonds have flaws/inclusions, while most other lab created gems, like sapphire, are flawless? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lab diamonds are like that too, but for jewelry purposes a perfect diamond is a definitely lab created one, and people think synthetic diamonds are worth less. So lab created diamonds are being intentionally made with flaws because people aren't buying them on account of being too perfect. That said I've never heard of lab diamonds having flaws before, theyre normally perfect, but I know that this is the most likely explanation as to why some do have flaws."
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n1j45g | What makes some mushrooms edible and harmless while others are toxic and dangerous? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What *makes* some mushrooms toxic varies from mushroom to mushroom. The toxin one uses can act very different from another one. I don't think discussing what makes all the different varieties of mushrooms toxic vs the ones harmless to us has an easy ELI5 answer. *Why* some mushrooms evolved to be toxic and some didn't is easier to answer. Some fungi don't want their mushrooms to be eaten because it interrupts their whole plan of using those mushrooms to spread spores. Some actually want animals to come and eat them since that typically results in the animal spreading their spores around in the process. This is much like the difference between a cactus and a berry. The cactus would die if animals ate it, so it developed spines and bitter taste/poison to discourage animals from eating it. A berry on the other hand contains seeds meant to pass through an animal's digestion. By making the berry yummy for animals to eat, it helps with the plant's life plan of spreading seeds far and wide. Similarly, most edible mushrooms evolved to make themselves attractive for animals to eat so their spores have a chance of traveling further in the process.",
"Some mushrooms have toxins they produce to not be eaten. Others didn’t evolve that. The toxins depend on the mushroom variety"
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n1k7q1 | how does our brain know where our nerves are located | is it like we see where we feel it and our brain remembers that or what I'm confused | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Every nerve in your body is directly connected to your brain like a line of roads, and your brain learns which \"highway\" leads where through trial and error as you grow. Babies have to figure out which impulses go to the hand, then which impulses make it move, then how to control which direction it moves, etc."
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n1ktyr | From a medical standpoint, why is bulimia unhealthy? | First off, I don't mean to be insensitive & I am actually this dumb. Anyways, why is bulimia bad for you? If eating unhealthy food is bad for you, then wouldn't throwing it back up be kinda good? Is throwing up a lot bad for your stomach or something? Is it just a social/mental health issue but is okay physically? Thanks | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The stomach acid will decay your teeth/esophagus. Throwing up means your body isn’t able to absorb nutrients it needs to thrive. Over time it can cause organ failure.",
"It’s really bad for your throat, mouth, tongue, lungs, and teeth to be barfing up stomach acids all the time. It leads to tooth loss and pyloric sphincter issues.",
"Entirely aside from the mental health issues related with typical bulimia, it causes two main issues, as far as I know. First, stomach acid is very acidic, and will slightly burn the esophagus and mouth at every instance of throwing up. For non-bulimic people, it’s not an issue because it happens so rarely; but for people doing this every day, that damage can add up and lead to some bad issues. The second issue is simple malnutrition. By not actually digesting food, the person is starving themselves. And by puking, they’re ditching stomach acid that their body produces, so they lose even more nutrients. But the mental health issue is usually the far larger concern. It takes a long time for bulimia to do lasting physical damage; but having bulimia in the first place indicates that long-term mental damage has already set in.",
"As a reformed bulimic of 30 years......teeth. It has destroyed my teeth. You only get 1 set of teeth and they need to be taken care of.",
"1) you aren’t eating 2) your stomach acid is strong as shit and your esophagus/throat/teeth/mouth cannot handle it. It will damage all of them.",
"The only thing I would add to what has already been said is that repeated episodes of vomiting can lead to electrolyte problems, especially low potassium. There is a lot of potassium in the fluid in your stomach. When you vomit too much, your body gets depleted of potassium. When potassium levels are low in the body, it can be very dangerous because this can cause the heart to go into cardiac arrest. I once took care of a bulimic patient who suffered cardiac arrest from low potassium. Because her heart temporarily stopped beating, her brain was not receiving blood, and she became brain dead."
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n1lacz | Why does it bother us when audio and video don’t sync? Specifically for people talking in movies/tv or animation. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because our brain is used to what we see and what we hear being synchronized. It's like motion sickness which is when what motion we feel and what motion we see don't match.",
"I dunno, but I'd rather sit in darkness and silence than watch my favourite tv show out of sync.",
"Because one sense isn't matching what the other one is sensing. It's off putting and kinda confuses your brain."
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n1m7lr | How is reduced fat cheese made? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Literally, they just take the cream out of the milk before they start the cheese making process. You know low-fat milk? Well, that is milk with the natural cream removed. Low-fat cheese is cheese made from this milk. To make cheese, you add a starter culture of bacteria to “sour” the milk, and then add rennin to make it curdle. After a bit of processing, you have curd (cheese) and whey (the milky liquid left over.) You drain away the whey and add salt, and that’s cheese."
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n1mosa | why are certain site domains considered more reputable/credible than others? As in, why is a .gov or .org website safer to trust than a .com? Couldn’t a team of hackers manipulate info on those sites as well? Couldn’t those sites also be taken down? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"To my understanding, The US government has a large amount of control over the issuance of \".gov\" domains, since they only want those being used by actually governmental entities. .org/.net domains don't have any restrictions on issuance, despite their association with their intended meanings.",
"Because anyone can just buy a .com domain URL and put up whatever they want on the website. There are more specific requirements to get a .org or .gov website, so the average Joe can't just go and buy ' URL_0 ', so if a website ends in .gov, you know it's a government-owned website, not some random idiot named Joe posting whatever random thoughts pop into his head. Yes, hackers can hack government websites, but those websites also tend to have better security than random Joe's antivax website he just threw up in a day, so it's a lot less likely to happen.",
"You don’t need to be a hacker to put whatever you want on a .org. Those domains are not necessarily any more credible than a .com. Really all it means is that the owner of the site payed a bit more and put in more effort because they wanted to look more official. .gov sites are a bit different, but still upload many articles from people without any fact checking or credibility. My college English professor really hates that high school teacher teach that."
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n1nxe7 | How did human civilisation come to a consensus on how long a second is? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It originated with the ancient Sumerians, who had a sexagesimal system of mathematics (a numeral system with sixty as its base). The Babylonians adopted the Sumerian method, which later was adopted by the Greeks, and then adopted by the Romans. Thereafter the practice spread throughout Western Europe and eventually the world, via the Roman Empire and later, via European colonization and trade.",
"Our time system is based on the counting system of the sumerians who counted in ‘sixties’ (as opposed to our system which goes by tens and then hundreds and so on). The sumerian system, iirc is based on time and specifically the passing of hours and day/nights. Its also the reason why a full circle is 360 degrees (6x60). Based on the passing of an hour and then a minute you come to the duration of a second. All based on sundials btw. The sumerians codified it. So I’m not sure cultural domination comes into it as much. The system made sense to keep track of time and days. It was practical, so it was widely adopted.",
"The original length of a second is based on the length of the day and dividing it a certain number of times. The day is fixed by outside factor the number of times it get divided by is due to culture and traditions. Dividing the day and night into 12 hours each goes back a very long time and was a thing in ancient Rome and spread by them and by Christians in general once they converted. Making all hours the same length no matter how much daylight there was, was an early improvement on that, that made timekeeping much easier. Dividing the hour into 60 small (minute) parts and then dividing those minute parts a *second* time into seconds is much more recently, not going father back than a millennia. But that was long enough ago for Europeans and especially the British to pick it up and introduce it wherever they explored and colonized. Having divisions like seconds and minutes only make sense if you have clocks accurate enough to tell time this well. By the time we had clocks accurate enough to tell fractions of a second, we had moved away from the 60 based format and instead of having a third division of 1/60 of a second we now use hundred of a second. The current second is based on this tradition but defined differently"
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n1ogu4 | Why do people suddenly look so old as soon as they have kids? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Kids are a lot of work. Especially in the first year you have a lot less time to care for your appearance, and depending on the kid you might lose A LOT of sleep.",
"As a parent of two: Lack of sleep, lack of time for yourself, stress, worries... You suddenly only exist for the kids anymore. This is until they're old enough to be home alone for some time (I hope).",
"Because being pregnant is exhausting.. and then you give birth... and you have to feed this new life every 3hours. There is no such thing as solid sleep.... and it lasts for about 3 months. . Anyone getting that much sleep is going to look like shit. Let’s just put it this way... they literally suck the life out of you. But in the end it is all worth it... even if you do end up looking like shit. Not me though, I look fab... but that’s only because they are teenagers now."
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n1ohzp | Why does grapefruit juice mess with so many medicines? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's an enzyme in your small intestine (CYP3A4) that has a large role in breaking down certain medicines. In order to compensate for the action of this enzyme, the actual dosage of the medicine in question has to be made larger than it otherwise would be so it can have its proper effect. However, grapefruit juice interferes with this enzyme and prevents it working properly, which means more of the medicine gets absorbed and thus you're more likely to suffer side-effects from having too much of the medicine.",
"Grapefruit inhibits the enzyme CYP3A4. CYP3A4 breaks down certain drugs. If it is now being inhibited by grapefruit, what is going to break down the other certain drugs? There is a rise in concentration of those drugs which leads to more side effects of those drugs.",
"Medications are broken down by complex biochemical pathways in either the liver or the kidney. Grapefruit juice contains a chemical that competes with a certain liver pathway. So, if you take medications broken down by this pathway, and drink grapefruit juice, the pathway does not work as well. There is a potential that the medication could build up in your system and cause toxic effects."
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n1pg0j | Why do bees sting you even if it means their death? Don't they have a sense of survival? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"**TL;DR:** *Bees don't \"think\" like we do. Most of their behaviours are automatic.* Think of a bee as about 99% robot that's been programmed to respond to what goes on around them in a certain way. That programming comes from millions of years of previous bees surviving based on what worked for them, collectively as a species. And in addition to the whole build-hives, collect-pollen, make-honey stuff, it has a basic instruction in it that says \"attempt to sting if the hive is in danger\". And the programming is so strong that it doesn't consider what happens to the bee itself, because it's easier to make more replacement bees than it is to not drive away the destructive intruder. If the target is small, the bee can actually pull its stinger out after injecting some poison. But if it's large, the barb in the stinger stays embedded and the bee's poison gland actually stays attached to it when the bee tries to leave, killing the bee. This sounds weird, so why? Even if the attacking bee is brushed away, the larger attacker gets more poison from the stinger which is left, which makes it feel worse. And that increases the odds that the attacker will stay the hell away from beehives in the future.",
"Remember that most of the bees in a hive do not reproduce. The survival of an individual bee is insignificant for them as long as the queen and the hive survive. Also bees can sting things without dieing. It works fine against other insects for instance. Our skin though is indeed too elastic and the bee stinger gets stuck in it.",
"A single bee values the whole hive over itself, if it feels it's home/sisters are in danger it will give it's life to protect it.",
"No they do not have the same sense of individual survival as most other creatures. Their primary focus is that of the survival of their colony and their queen. That being said they do often have a lot of other tactics before they sting. Such as crashing into an intruder to make them pay attention to them and creating lots of noise with their wings to act bigger then they are. It is only when these warnings are not heathed or when the bee becomes trapped that they will actually sting someone.",
"Bees don't know they will die if they sting you. They don't die when they sting insects, only when their stinger gets stuck in a mammal's skin."
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n1pmtr | What is a confidence interval? | Basicly the title - Attempting to read more research, but i'm not sure i've understood confidence intervals properly. | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"At a simple level, it is the range of some value that you are confident (to a pre-defined level such as 95%) that some quantity, measurement, dimension etc falls within. So if I make 1 million widgets that are designed to be 100mm long, and I measure 1000 of them. I will get a distribution of lengths that is probably a normal distribution. So I can do some stats and say that 95% of all my widgets will fall between e.g. 98.2 and 101.8 mm.",
"Lots of people misunderstanding confidence intervals here. A normal 95% confidence interval ***does not*** tell you that there is a 95% chance that the true value lies in that interval. Rather, it tells you that if you were to repeatedly sample from your population and construct many 95% confidence intervals, roughly 95% of those 95% confidence intervals would contain the true value. Any specific interval is either in the 5% or that’s wrong or isn’t, but it doesn’t make sense to say that a given (already-calculated) confidence interval has a 5% chance of being wrong. An analogy for this is that, given a box with 95 red marbles and 5 blue marbles, you can say that you have a 95% chance of drawing a red marble before drawing a marble, but once you’ve drawn a marble you can’t say there’s a 95% chance that the marble you’re holding is red, because that’s no longer a matter of chance—it’s been decided already. The trick is that in the case of confidence intervals, you just don’t know whether your interval is a dud or not. But you do know that, out of all 95% confidence intervals constructed for a given parameter, about 95% of them contain the true value. Perhaps another way of formulating that analogy: Suppose we have some method of calculating a 95% confidence interval that returns the interval from negative infinity to infinity 95% of the time and returns the (empty) interval from 0 to 0 the other 5% of the time. It is true that 95% of the intervals will contain the true value—but it is definitely not true that, given any specific interval, I can say that it has a 95% chance of containing the true value, since if I'm talking about the empty interval, then there's absolutely no way it contains the true value (and if I'm talking about the other type of interval, there's no way it doesn't contain the true value). Ultimately, with normal confidence intervals, you can't tell whether a given interval contains the true value or not, but that doesn't mean that you can talk about the probability of a given interval being correct. Now there are other types of interval estimates that behave differently (eg Bayesian credible intervals), but those are less common in science papers. A good summary of the difference: > Credible intervals capture our current uncertainty in the location of the parameter values and thus can be interpreted as probabilistic statement about the parameter. In contrast, confidence intervals capture the uncertainty about the interval we have obtained (i.e., whether it contains the true value or not). Thus, they cannot be interpreted as a probabilistic statement about the true parameter values. from URL_0"
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n1q387 | Why do women on average live longer than men? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A few reasons. Part is genetic. Males have a chromosome pair that is x and y instead of x and x. This means there is slightly less genetic information and redundancy for males, which is thought to make them more susceptible to a few disabilities than females. Then there is also a big difference in risky behavior in males in their teens and early adult years, which affects the average age a little bit. Traditionally, males also accept higher risk in their line of work, and culturally, men are less likely to see a doctor when they have health issues, which means some illnesses won't be caught until they've reached an advanced stage.",
"This isn’t just something we see in women but in females of other species, females have a stronger genetic combination having a pair of X’s meaning that the chromosome exchange information resulting in a stronger gene pool. Men also have a tendency to lead unhealthy lifestyles, take more risks and also more likely to die in wars. The last one only really changed gradually in the last 30 years but it is still overwhelmingly men.",
"Yet **women** continue to **live longer than men**, suggesting the biological differences also have a role. ... Experts shave said the gap is due to a combination of biological and social differences. **Men's** hormone testosterone is linked to a decrease in their immune system and risk of cardiovascular diseases as they age."
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n1qypr | Where in the timeline of a bird laying an egg(s) is fertilization and nest building? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It really depends on the bird. Some birds make a new nest every season, or they just lay their eggs on the ground or on flat rock, like cliff-dwelling birds. They'd probably make the nest (or almost-nest) after fertilisation. Others reuse the same nest for years, like large eagles. They may build/patch up the nest before fertilisation, or never even actually build a new nest at all, and only use old nests from other pairs. For elaborate nests, or for tidy birds, there is usually a lot of maintenance work that goes into it even through the incubation and chick-rearing time. For some bird species, like weaver birds, the male bird builds the nest and uses it to tempt females into nesting there. If the nest isn't located in a good spot, or if it isn't sturdy enough (and it's tested thoroughly), the female will reject it, and he may have to build a new one from scratch. So here the nest is built before fertilisation.",
"Birds (sometimes) have special parts called cloacas, instead of making babies like people do, they do it by rubbing those parts together, then the mama bird lays an egg, if they don’t have a cloaca then it’s like when people make babies. Depending on the bird, the nest is only built once the mama bird is fertilized, or it’s built after reaching maturity.",
"[Bird reproduction. an overview of the process with visual diagrams ]( URL_0 )"
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n1rife | How can someone have iron deficiency when they don't have anemia? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In a similar way that thirsty people are not always suffering from dehydration. They are different degrees of the same condition. You can suffer symptoms of iron deficiency long before it becomes so serious that you develop anemia from it. It is also possible to suffer anemia from other conditions although this is quite rare."
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n1ro7b | why does the standard error formulae has n in the root ? | I have tried to get some information on this, but haven't understood why Std Error = std Deviation / √n Why the sample size is in the root ? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"the more times you try to measure something, the less likely it is that your measurements get distorted by an outlier. it's called the \"law of large numbers\". the more often you measure the more likely it is that any random effect that distorted the \"true\" value and resulted in your measured value will be counteracted by another \"error effect\" that distorts another measurement in the opposite direction, so that eventually they'll even out if you just keep on measuring. (that's why it's important to distinguish between statistical and systemic errors)"
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n1sasi | Why can't compressed oxygen be transported to india on planes, only on roads and trains? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Containers filled with oxygen are generally not transported on board aircrafts as they are considered combustible and may pose a risk to the planes. Oxygen behaves differently to nitrogen and other inert gases. It is very reactive. Even a small increase in the oxygen level in the air to 24% can create a dangerous situation. It becomes easier to start a fire, which will then burn hotter and more fiercely than in normal air.",
"Compressed oxygen is actually really dangerous as others have mentioned. I'm a nurse and get incredibly frustrated when I find O2 cannisters free standing...they need to be in proper storage racks. God forbid there comes a time one tips and hits the floor the wrong way, we'd be toast.",
"Liquid oxygen is actually quite heavy and airplanes is not able to carry as much weight as trains and boats. Not only is the oxygen quite heavy but it requires thick tanks and cooling equipment in order to transport it which is also quite heavy. And of course if something were to go wrong and the liquid oxygen were to spill out there are few ways of preventing the airplane from crashing.",
"Oxygen is dangerous and a leak of pure oxygen has the ability to light almost anything on fire. On a boat or a train that's alright, you have fire fighting equipment and nearby crews can come help you if it starts getting out of hand. On a plane, a fire is extremely dangerous because you can't stop what you're doing and fight it, you have to deal with it before it takes out control systems and you die, and a cargo full of compressed or liquid oxygen would quickly rupture the other vessels adding more oxygen making the fire bigger and its all out of control very quickly. Most cargo actually moves on passenger planes not dedicated freight planes, and because these tubes are packed full of people there are limits in what you can ship under them. Anything particularly risky (bulk lithium ion batteries or other flammable material) has to go on dedicated freight planes once you get over a certain relatively small amount, and if you want to ship a lot then you'd need to commission lots and lots of planes, or just reroute things from a more local supplier via train. A far far better solution than sending compressed oxygen via planes would be sending *oxygen generators* that can pull oxygen from the air and compress it into the canisters for use. These are bulky but non-flammable and can serve far more people for the same weight.",
"LOX (liquid oxygen) is VERY reactive, not just flammable, but corrosive. There is a reason why rockets using LOX only fuel up moments before launch. It can rapidly corrode many metals in addition to structurally weakening them. Just by way of example, take something ordinary like clothing, paper, charcoal, they will burn. But if liquid oxygen were to get spilled on them, they wouldn't burn, they would EXPLODE For that and many other reasons, you don't want it on a pressurized aircraft that can't safely vent it if there is a failure. But wait don't airliners have oxygen on board for passengers? They do but not in liquid form. They use oxygen concentrators which pull in outside air, compress it, pass it through a kind of filter membrane which pulls out most of the nitrogen (remember 'air' is mostly nitrogen) and what's left is concentrated oxygen gas and trace elements. This is where the oxygen in flight comes from. In case of fire or sudden loss of pressure, there are also chemical oxygen generators which very quickly 'burn' to release large quantities of oxygen to the breathing masks."
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n1t4f0 | Why is everyone/everything treated as a singular? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is a singular, there’s only one “everyone” That’s usually the grammatical situation with collective nouns. Those geese *are* flying, but the entire flock *is* flying.",
"Because you are treating many things as a single, collective group. In this sense it is \"one\" thing: **a** group that happens to include everyone/everything.",
"Groups are perceived as a separate, singular entity. A business is a living, breathing *thing* with unique behaviors that the individuals of which it is composed do not share. Whether you refer to a group as “it” or “them” depends on the emphasis you want to make. Are you focused on the *all the individuals* of the group or the the synergetic *collective* they create? They’re two different things.",
"Let me try explaining like you're five :) Think of the word \"everyone\" as two words \"every one\". To use in a sentence: Every (single) **one of them (or us) *is*** ........ So, everyone is..... and not everyone are. The same argument holds true for \"none\". None can be thought of as a contraction of \"Not (even) one\". So, Not (even) one of them *is*..... or, none of them *is*. When you think of \"one\" or the implied \"single\" being the operative number or word here, it is easy to reason why it is singular and not plural. I hope this helps. :) Cheers"
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n1u7i6 | after Michael Collins had dropped the others off and was orbiting the moon, how did Buzz and Neil get picked up again into Columbia? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This was actually a serious problem and one of the main issues that the Gemini progarm was designed to test out. How can two spacecraft join up in orbit. It was actually such a dificult problem that they considered landing the entire spacecraft on the Moon, command module and everything. This would have required a much bigger rocket to be able to bring all the fuel required to the surface of the Moon and back again. Even the early Gemini program had huge issues with this as the astronauts had a hard time getting close to the target Agena rocket launched a day before their mission. Even the Russians had issues with this although they were able to get a bit closer then the Americans. It was actually Buzz Aldrin who cracked the problem. He was a decorated fighter pilot from the Korean War but had been rejected for the Astronaut corps. So he started studying at MIT and published his Sc.D. in astronauting on *Line-Of-Sight Guidance Techniques For Manned Orbital Rendezvous*. This was a revolutionary paper which translated the complex physical models of two spacecraft in orbit into simple terms that a pilot like himself could understand. This allowed the astronauts to do the quick calcualtions needed to find out where to fire their thrusters to get close to and eventually dock with another spacecraft. Buzz Aldrin was accepted as an astronaut and were able to fly on a Gemini mission himself where he again solved one of the biggest issues they had and performed the first fully successfull EVA thanks to his diving experience. The fact that he was the first man to land on the moon was a coincidence.",
"The Lunar Lander had a small rocket motor to lift it back into lunar orbit. The top part (crew module) of the lander separated from the bottom (lander) section, and flew up to meet the Command Module in orbit.",
"The Lunar Lander was actually two parts, a descent stage and an ascent module. The gold base with the legs on it had fuel tanks in it and several smaller rocket engines on it and was used to get them safely to the surface of the moon. The silvery capsule on top also had fuel tanks and rocket engines on it. The engine on this stage was used to get them off the surface and into orbit of the moon where they could meet up with the Command Module and transfer into it. When it was time to go and the orbiting Command Module was in a good spot for a meet up they'd disconnect from the descent stage and the legs, fire up the engines, and then dock with the Command Module in orbit Leaving the legs behind greatly reduced the mass they were trying to get into orbit, combined with the low gravity of the moon meant that it was possible to get back into orbit with a relatively small engine and limited amount of fuel. The legs of all the Lunar Landers are still on the moon today."
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n1umix | What's the economic or strategic importance of the Lagrange points? | re-post due to requiring a wording tweak It could be mainly the economic or strategic importance of the points to matters of national security, especially when competing against other countries | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Same answer from [the last time you asked this;]( URL_0 ) > The Lagrange points are stable(ish) orbital points, meaning if you put an object there it will generally stay there as opposed to wandering off into space because of the various tidal effects that come with multi-body gravitational systems like our Solar System (and, in this particular case, the three-body system formed by the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon). The particularly important ones are the L4 and L5 points, which are the most stable, and are (to a degree) self-reinforcing; an object that gets bumped off those points will (within reason) be able to find it's way back without any sort of thrusters or course correction. Gravity does all the work for you. > From a strategic standpoint, those points are of relative importance because it's much more feasible to park a permanent installation at those points than elsewhere in Earth's or the Moon's orbit; anywhere else and you have to deal with supply chains and logistics and costs associated with moving fuel to the station in order to have it course-correct over time. > Thus, if you want to control cislunar space (i.e. everything inside and immediately outside the Moon's orbit around the Earth), you need to control the Moon's L4 and L5 Lagrange points. With them, you can park nuclear weapons, observational equipment, whatever you want in order to maintain control over the region, and because there are only two Lagrange points of any value, that means it's relatively easy for one nation to monopolize control of that area of space. > Put another way; Lagrange points are to space as reefs and atolls are to the ocean, and as we can see with the South China Sea situation, whoever controls those atolls has a pretty firm grip on the region. The economic side is largely the same; stations at the L4 and L5 points would be considerably cheaper to maintain as they'll naturally have a stable orbit."
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n1v1t6 | Why are 3D printers not commonly used in large scale manufacturing? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"3D printers are great for making one of something. If you want to make 1,000 other methods such as injection molding are much faster options.",
"Too expensive. If you're going to mass produce say, happy meal toys, why do you need to use a printer that can print anything? You just need a way to make the toys. Its far cheaper to make something like an injection mold machine instead. Then if you want to make a different toy you just swap the mold plates out and go for it.",
"3D printers are great for prototyping because they're flexible, you can load your design in and have it printed by the morning which is pretty good for prototyping, but only getting one piece every few hours is garbage for large scale manufacturing. 3D printers are also expensive, your plastic prototype might cost you $20 in material which is better than $500 for a new plastic die, but *each* unit will cost you $20 so if you make more than about 25 it would have been better to pay for the die. Injection molding is orders of magnitude faster. A relatively small part that might take your 3D printer 20 minutes to print could instead be injection molded in under a minute in a die that produces 500 pieces all within that same minute. If you need to get 100,000 parts a day then you'd need a huge array of 3D printers or a single injection molder running for half a shift. Injection molders have dies that can be swapped out so you can use the same big honking machine and swap the dies to make other parts. 3D printers are good for high mix/low volume but cannot scale to high volume manufacturing. We already have equipment that is significantly better for low mix/high volume production of plastic and metal",
"Because the materials you can 3D print with are limited. And then cost of replacing existing manufacturing lines isnt worth what you might save using a 3D printer. Most 3D printers essentially work only with polymers (plastics) and cementitious materials (materials that start as a liquid but then set/harden) There are some that can print metal, but again not all metals since there are vastly different properties (melting temp being important) for each kind. 3D printing is helpful for making complex shapes, but we also have another technology that can do that, molding/injection molding. Could 3D printing start entering the manufacturing world moving forward? Yes absolutely I’m sure people will find applicable uses for it. But it isn’t wide spread now because it isn’t economic in most cases to replace existing manufacturing techniques."
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n1v2fn | Magnets. How do they work? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are these imaginary lines called magnetic field lines .... if an object emit these lines then it is called a north pole ....and if an object absorbs these lines then its called a south pole .... if 2 opposite poles are brought together ...the magnetic field lines align ...which causes attraction ....when 2 same poles are brought together ...the lines are in opposite directions ....so they repel. That is all I know.",
"So this can get really complicated, and there is a bit of a difference between natural magnets and electromagnets. “Magnetism” is a “field” that surrounds things that are magnetic. It is stronger the closer you get and it has a direction to it. When you bring 2 magnetic fields together and the are both facing the same way they will attract each other and if they are facing each other (North to North or South to South) they push each other away. Magnetism is only one side of it though. Electric fields and magnetic fields are linked and one will cause the other when they move. This is the basis behind both electromagnets and power generation. An electric charge also has a field, but it goes out in a sphere from the center instead of having a direction. When an electric charge moves it creates a magnetic field. So any time you push electricity through a wire it creates a magnetic field. Similarly, if you move a magnet along a wire it will make electricity want to flow through the wire. When you combine coils of wire and magnets you can do really interesting things. Power is generated by spinning magnets in a coil of wires. Electromagnets are made by wrapping coils around a ferrous metal. And transformers (which change voltage) involve 2 separate coils of wire around a single magnet. One coil makes a magnetic field which makes a different electric field in the other coil at a different voltage depending on how many times each coil is wrapped around the magnet."
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n1vghm | How do immunosuppresants make transplanted organs essentially invisible while still allowing the immune system to fight off pathogens? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Simple answer, it doesn't. Ppl on immuno suppressant treatment after organ transplant are on the vulnerable list for life. It doesn't destroy it completely. I've seen a neutropenic patient with a neutrophil count of 0.0 which was scary af. Less than 0.5 is considered serious in haematology departments but normal medical wards will consider less than 1.0 as neutropenic. These patients can be killed by thrush, let alone something more dangerous. I don't know off the top of my head what a transplant patient is gonna sit at but it's probably higher than above values but lower than a healthy average. So they need to be careful to avoid public in flu season, have all their family and friends get their flu jabs. I *think* they can't get it because they're immune system won't respond to the jab. It would be a waste."
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n1vka3 | What is the voice which controls/directs our brain, if brain is the main functionality organ of our body ? | To simplify, you want to wake up but your body doesn't and then this voice comes to motivate you to get out of your bed but still you want to sleep. What are these voices and why they differ ? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your brain is basically a big biological computer simulating reality. It does its best to base that reality on what we can sense, but it has the ability to fabricate pretty much anything within the mental construct. And sometimes it can be at odds with itself. Your physical urges are to sleep, your direct mental control side wants to get up. So your brain decided to manifest a voice to represent the conflict. The brain is weird."
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