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n4n3wp | How do we determine length of DNA | DNA is pretty long structure and often has billions of base pairs. How do we determine the number of base pairs so accurately? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"DNA is surprisingly strong, so we can literally grab one end and stretch it out, then measure it in nanometers. From there, we can measure its approximate length in number of nucleotides by just dividing that number by the average size of a nucleotide, which is very consistent because there are only four and they are all almost exactly the same size."
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n4o0of | Why do government employees pay taxes? | I never understood why someone who is paid by the government would turn around and pay the money back to the government. Why wouldn’t they just factor in the fact that they have to pay taxes and adjust pay accordingly? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Few things: 1) Federal employees still have to pay various forms of state taxes, but their pay doesn't come from the state government. 2) State, county and city employees still have to pay various forms of state and federal taxes, though their pay doesn't come from the federal government. 3) Everyone has specific tax requirements and situations that they report on their tax return. The government can't know that Bob in HR has five kids and just bought an electric car, or that Sarah over in Accounting had medical and educational expenses and just bought a house. So even though the tax rates are going to be the same, the actual amount of money people are taxed is going to vary depending on their personal situation. It wouldn't be fair to just remove government taxes prematurely from a person's pay check when they would otherwise be entitled to that money.",
"Because taxes are adjusted by your life situation. Simple example: you have kids, you get some tax excemptions."
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n4pjkt | How does peoples personal lives affect the global market? E.g. Bill Gates divorce | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The main reason is because they jointly run a massive philanthropic network. The implications of their divorce on the finances of that network (and on global philanthropy as a whole) would be significant, which is why they put out a joint statement indicating that they would continue running it together despite their divorce. It's not as if their divorce itself would send markets into turmoil, it's the business implications of said divorce.",
"There are people who are able to single handingly change financial outcomes based on their decisions. It is not only the billionares like Bill Gates but also elected officials and of course supreme court justices. What happens in these peoples personal lives may affect their decisions. There are plenty of examples of political leaders changing their political platform due to something in their personal lives. And billionares spend a lot of money or even change their entire companies focus based on their own personal oppinion. So there is a lot of traders focused on trying to predict the future decisions of these people in order to place their investments correctly. And when things happen in their personal lives these predictions change quite dramatically.",
"It helps to understand that the stock market is just a barometer for how the absolute richest feel at that moment in time. So with that in mind, let's put on a rich flesh suit for a minute. Things have been pretty stable in your world. Daddy Vlad holds the most far and away and Dragon Jeff sits on the second ~~smallest~~ biggest pile. That much has been known for nearly ten years. It's stable, you can set a clock by it. Putin, Bezos, Buffet, and Gates control the lion's share of this planet's fiat. Other billionaires know what they're going to do with it (sit on it, toss out crumbs to charities, make philanthropic gestures) and it's become a fact of their lives. Now. Number four on that list is in the process of not only losing half that money, but creating another billionaire (through being married in a community property state, Melinda gets half of *everything*) who may or may not align with the collective views of their class. Melinda probably won't rock the boat the way Bezos's wife did. But they don't know! So they panic and that causes fluctuation in the stock market.",
"It will only affect anything if the people involved start using their money differently. Which is pretty unlikely to happen. Let's imagine that Bill and Melinda Gates split their assets 50/50. That's still the same amount of money, invested in the same securities, financing the same companies, charities, etc. The money doesn't have to go anywhere new just because the person who owns it changes. Now, if they got divorced *because* they had opposing ideas of that to do with their money, that could cause some changes. Let's say Melinda Gates still wants to fight global diseases, but Bill's suddenly decided that he actually likes diseases and wants to start trying to make them worse. Well, that's going to affect some markets. But most of the time, people don't radically change their personalities and priorities like that, even when they get divorced."
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n4qrc9 | Matter is made up of atoms but how do we know what atoms is it made of ? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We can take atoms apart and look at the pieces. Electrons are relatively easy to rip away from atoms; flowing electrons is (usually) how electricity works, and atoms with more or fewer electrons than normal are called \"ions\" and the basis for a whole bunch of chemical reactions we can study. We can generate neutrons through specific nuclear reactions. They have no charge so they're more tricky to interact with but we can create them as separate individual particles. Specific nuclear reactions can also generate protons and, since they're charged, we can also manipulate them like electrons (although they way a LOT more). A hydrogen ion is just a proton and we have those floating around in any glass of tap water. And, in general, we can smash atoms into each other in particle accelerators, hard enough to break the atoms apart, and study what comes out."
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n4qy6i | What is euclidean | I look up the definition and it mentions Euclid. The best information I've gotten so far was from Wolfram alpha but even that wasn't much help. I kind of need to visualize it Also: what is its relationship to physics and dimensions if any? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Euclidean geometry is a specific type of geometry. And in short, it's just geometry done on a flat surface as opposed to one that's curved. Yeah, thats...thats literally it. Unless you went to college specifically for math all of the geometry you have ever done has been euclidean geometry. Now, why is that such an important thing and why is it called that? Back in like 300 BC a guy named Euclid wrote a book called *Elements* and it was basically the cornerstone of all geometry and math for a very long time. And in it he wrote 5 postulates, basically just ideas he said where true. And the 5th one (the others aren't super important) basically says that if you take two lines that are perfectly parallel they will be perfectly parallel forever, and any two lines which are not perfectly parallel must intersect somewhere. This is true on a flat surface, but as soon as the surface you are working on is curved that's no longer true. Two lines that are parallel in one spot can end up intersecting somewhere else. tl;dr when you draw lines on a piece of paper its Euclidean when you draw lines on a globe its non-euclidean",
"It's the geometry of the universe you always thought you lived in: Parallel lines never converge, the interior angles of a triangle always sum to 180 degrees, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, etc. It's related to physics because our world seems very Euclidean, but when we go to the extremes of gravity, we find that our universe is not Euclidean: Space can bend and curve. Different observers measure different distances, etc.",
"This is about Euclids five axioms of geometry. This was five things about geometry that he assumed were all true. And in the last 2300 years we have been able to prove that four of them are always true. However the fifth one is not always true. This is the parallel postulate. And without this fifth axiom a lot of the geometry you learned in school does not work. So we usually divide geometry into Euclidian geometry and non-euclidian geometry. One where we assume the fifth axiom and one where we don't.",
"We define geometries by how we measure the distance between two points (called the *metric*). Euclidean geometries are ones where the distance is defined “as the crow flies”, that is, a straight line between the points. In turn this gives a “flatness” to the geometry."
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n4rjkv | Why in some mirrors, when there’s a stain on the mirror, you can see some “space” between the stain and its reflection, instead of them touching each other? | [like this water drops]( URL_0 ) | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For most mirrors, and especially regular bathroom mirrors, the reflecting surface is on the \\*back\\* of the glass. It's a sheet of plate glass with reflective metal on the back surface and the clear glass in front. The water is resting on the front surface of the glass. The reflection (the actual mirror surface) is on the back surface. The \"gap\" is the thickness of the glass in between. A mirror that's silvered on the front surface, like a big telescope mirror, won't do this.",
"Most mirrors are designed to have a reflective surface on the back side of glass. This helps protect that reflective surface so it doesn't chip and break apart. So when an object is on the surface of the glass, it's actually a few millimeters or so away from the reflective backing. Therefore you see the stain on the surface of the glass *and* in the reflection of the reflective back surface. If you had a mirror that had the reflective surface at the front, you wouldn't see this \"double image\".",
"Mirror are made of a reflective surface, typically aluminum, covered in glass. That space is just the glass covering the metal.",
"The shiny part that holds the reflection is covered by a clear part, so things on the clear part are still not directly touching their reflection",
"Mirrors usually have two layers. One layer of glass, and a reflective layer behind it. Glass in and of itself is slightly reflective. You see the reflection of the glass, and the reflection on the surface behind it. As others have mentioned, how far apart they are depends on how thick the glass is.",
"I just wanted to add to the other comments. When you put your finger on mirrors in fitting rooms in shopping malls etc. normal mirror has space between your finger and it's reflection. But if there's no space that means it's a one way glass and it is possible that there's someone watching you behind the glass. I don't want to creep you out but I just wanted to tell that it's possible."
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n4rkws | What does Neanderthal gene sequencing actually tell us about human-Neanderthal interactions? And is there any other evidence of interaction? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The first archeological sites where we found Neanderthals they were buried under newer evidence of Homo Sapiens. So the theory was that over time Neanderthals were displaced for Sapiens. However the more sites we found and the more we were able to explore of these sites the more complex things became. We did not just find Neanderthal remains under Sapiens remains but sometimes it was the other way around and sometimes they were buried right next to each other. And this suggests that they were not simply competing with each other and over shared resources but they appeared to be living together in the same caves at the same time. And that is quite uncommon for different species to do. And when we were able to sequence Neanderthal genes we discovered that some of the unique mutations in Neanderthals which were not present in Sapiens at that time are now present in modern day humans. That means that modern humans have some Neanderthal ancestors. And that explains the previous archeological finds where we see Neanderthals and Sapiens living together because they were actually together and able to reproduce with each other.",
"URL_0 This article talks about the percentage of Neanderthal genes in various human populations. So you can infer some level of interactions."
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n4s3in | when astronauts do some space walk around the ISS, how are they not being left behind by the ISS that is orbiting around 17k mph? | Edit: I mean, space walking outside the ISS fixing and doing other things. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The astronauts are also moving at the same rate as the station. So astronauts relative to station there is no difference in speed.",
"Because you are also doing the 17k mph. Think of it like being in a car doing 50 mph. You don't really feel the momentum of doing 50 mph in the car but but you are.",
"The velocity of the astronaut is the same as the ISS. In space there isn’t the same atmosphere and air resistance at ground level. In a vehicle at sea level you are travelling at the same velocity as the vehicle, but if you were to jump out wind resistance and gravity would act as forces against your momentum. In space the the astronaut leaves the ISS they are still moving at the same velocity. There isn’t wind resistance up there and they keep floating along at the same velocity. An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an opposing force. Edit: URL_0 velocity=distance/time",
"Newton's first law states that *an object in motion tends to stay in motion*, which means that if you are currently moving (on the ISS) then you will continue to move at the same speed unless some other force acts on you. Since you are in space, there is no air. There is nothing to cause you to slow down. Think about how much harder it is to walk through water than it is to walk through air. It is even easier to walk through the vacuum of space, since there is nothing you have to walk *through*. So when you step outside the ISS, you are still moving at the same speed that you were when you were inside of it, and there is nothing outside to slow you down. Here's a video illustrating this concept at much slower speeds: URL_0"
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n4tlf3 | How does a salt water rinse work for toothache/inflamed gums? | I had my wisdom teeth taken out and I've been using an anti-bacterial mouthwash (chlorhexidine) but I've found a salt water rinse actually works better for getting rid of the pain/inflammation/aching. So why does something as simple as salt and water work better than a dentist recommended antibacterial mouth wash? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"warm Salt Water works well because it's a hypertonic solution, means that the osmotic difference between the solution and the tissues is such that it will pull water OUT of the tissues. The inflammed tissues will have excess water in it, and the hypertonic solution will calm it down by pulling out the water, allowing it to thin down and not be so \"angry\". It also acts as a mild disinfectant because the salt solution does the same to any bacteria that are around.",
"Saltwater is simply a more gentle form of antiseptic rinse. It also acts as a mild anti-inflammatory, as well. If you cannot tolerate the Clorhexidene, then saltwater is the way to go. I do it whenever I happen to eat something too hot (temperature) that burns the inside of my mouth. Soothing to the skin."
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n4txzb | What happens when a flying bullet hits another flying bullet? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This has actually happened. There's classic pictures of two bullets from the 1915 Gallipoli battleground with one jammed through the side of the other, and of two bullets from a Paris gunfight which are smooshed because they hit dead-on. Different effects come from the angle in which they hit, how close to the centre of each other that they hit, and the material the bullets are made from. A glancing bow will scar the bullets and change their direction. A more central contact could jam one bullet into the other if coming in from the side, or shatter a \"brittle\" metal bullet into pieces and create sparks in the process, or squish and flatten one that is more of a bendable soft metal like lead when you hit it head-on. So, lots of different possible results.",
"The same thing that happens when any two object collide. They push against each other depending on their physical properties, their angle, their velocity, etc. The end result depends on the combination of many different factors. In very ideal conditions they could simply hit each other, likely fuse to each other (due to massive amounts of heat and pressure generated on impact), then fall to the ground relatively harmlessly (because the kinetic energy they had could be cancelled and gravity would just pull them to the ground). Or they could deflect each other to change the direction they're travelling, or one could bisect the other (where one bullet enters the side of another bullet and splits it in half). Imagine what can happen to the vehicles involved in any two vehicle accident, that's pretty much the range of what can happen when two bullets collide too, except they don't follow a (mostly) flat road."
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n4u3d1 | What biological purpose did tyrannosaurus rex hands had? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I can't speak for T-rex specifically, but in general it's incorrect to assume that any given feature of an organism has a biological purpose. The way evolution works, any feature that isn't actively harmful can persist for a very long time. Such a feature may arise either by random mutation, or it may be something that an ancestral organism had which has since lost its usefulness. Sometimes such features atrophy and disappear over many generations, but not always. In the case of T-rex, its ancestors possessed four limbs for walking in a four-limbed fashion. At some point in its evolution, T-rex's ancestors adopted an upright stance. The front limbs don't just vanish, even if they're not used for anything at all any more. (Although in this specific example, T-rex might still have had some use for them.)",
"the size and location of the pec muscle attachments near the t rex arms suggests that kinematically they were used for holding onto prey. think of them as hooks used to grab and hold so the mouth can tear side to side."
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n4udkd | Why do people say that time began at the big bang? Is there no 1 trillion years ago, for example? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People say that because, as far as we can tell, that's what happened. \"Time\" isn't a thing by itself, it's intimately connected with space (that's why physicists talk about \"spacetime\" all the...time). So our concept of time is intimately tied with our concept of space; space, and spacetime, and hence time all came into being (we think) at the big bang. When you squash spacetime back into whatever it's original state was, space and time as we understand them quit existing. And the very notion of \"before\" implies time, so saying \"before the big bang\" literally doesn't mean anything in a technical timey-wimey sense. There might be \"something\" \"upstream\" of the big bang but, whatever it is, our physics doesn't work there so even our basic concepts of space and time don't work there either. It's like saying \"What color was the wall before you build the house?\". Without the house, you can't meaningfully talk about the color of the wall.",
"It's more that we have no way of measuring how time would work before the Big Bang. Our ability to understand the universe kind of falls apart at that point. We have no clue how we could measure or describe what happened before. Time as we understand it is dependent on the existence of well everything, so before anything existed there wouldn't really be time.",
"As far as i know, even if it is hard to understand, there was no concept of time before the big bang .",
"Our understanding of physics, the universe, and the ability of known physics to explain the universe, ends at the Big Bang. What may have existed prior, how long it existed, and if those concepts even have meaning within the post-big bang universe, is “Here Be Dragons”. We have neither the knowledge or tools to investigate or describe the universe prior to the Big Bang."
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n4uwdx | Why is spoiled food dangerous if our stomach acid can basically dissolve almost anything organic | Pretty much the title. If the stomach acid is strong enough to dissolve food, why can't it kill dangerous germs that cause all sorts of different diseases? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not all bacteria go down to the stomach, some stay in your mouth. Bacteria can also produce toxins on the food while it spoils, even if the stomach acid kills the bacteria, the toxins can still poison you. Also some bacteria are just acid resistant.",
"Well first, stomach acid can kill many germs but not all of them. Second, in some cases of food-borne illness, it's not the germs themselves that make you sick but toxins created by the germs, and stomach acid doesn't do anything to those toxins. This is why can't eat spoiled food even if it's cooked. Yes, cooking may kill the germs, but it still leaves the toxins that make you sick.",
"People have touched on almost everything, but it effectively boils down to a few factors; - the bacteria type - does the bacteria produce a toxin that *isn't* broken down by stomach acid? - how *much* bacteria are you getting in the bolus of food? One of the things I hadn't seen addressed here is that you can get sick if the number of colony forming units (CFUs) outnumber the amount of acid that gets them. If you wanted to raid a castle that had a moat around it, and you had an unlimited number of soldiers, and you were a psychopath...well, just continue throwing soldiers at the castle until the moat fills up with dead people, and then climb over it. Sure, lots of bacteria will die in that acid bath...but some might make it through the gates on the dissolving bodies of their comrades and make a nice home in your guts.",
"One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that most food based illness in the developed world isn't due to bacteria, but norovirus. Norovirus will quite happily move through your stomach to your small intestine where it sets up replicating and irritating your gi tract. Then when it's done enough damage it exits (in both directions) and gets spread onto every surface in your bathroom when you flush the toilet. Anyone who touches those surfaces can then infect themselves by putting their fingers or something they touch in their mouth, or infect others by failing to wash their hands (with bleach; norovirus largely ignores soap) and then serving/cooking their food.",
"Ever looked at your poop after eating corn? Some stuff our stomachs can't deal with conpletely",
"Still early in the thread to tell that not the bacteria/germs are the biggest problem but the substances (toxins) they are producing... you can't wash them away or destroy them with high temperature. It is called food POISONING for a reason.",
"A lot to unpack here but here it goes: First, there are two main ways that bacteria cause foodborne illness: intoxications and infections 1. Intoxications: Bacteria grow in the food and make toxins, and then you eat the food with the toxin and get sick. The toxins are acid resistant enough that the stomach acid doesn't do anything to them. 2. Infection: Stomach acid can and will kill some of the germs, but enough survive to get into your intestines and cause an infection. Edit: spelling, grammar",
"For one thing, stomach acid isn’t actually super strong. It’s a form of Hydrochloric Acid, but it is dilute. If you’ve ever had to clean up vomit, you’ll know that it doesn’t just burn through everything it touches. As others have pointed out too, it’s not just the living parts that are dangerous.",
"Hang on for a minute: > ...if our stomach acid can basically dissolve almost anything organic This is not true. There are a lot of organic things that a human stomach can't \"dissolve\" very efficiently. That includes grass, wood, bone, etc. Some animals can handle those things, but humans cannot.",
"Every bacterium has a wall/membrane called a Capsule. Some strains of bacteria have a Capsule that is resistant to strong acids evolved from when the earth was still very hostile. The capsule protects the bacterium until it reaches the small intestine, where it produces toxins leading to food poisoning. Some bacterium produce gasses that lead to wet burps which burn your esophagus. P.S. there are colonies of bacteria living in your intestine already, but they're tame and cause no harm if left untouched.",
"ELI5 by species: E. Coli produce certain anti-acids so they can survive the stomach. They have like 3 so if one fails the others kick in. Now that's gangster! So make sure you wash your hands after you poop. There is a super version(triple OG E. Coli(entiritis) that kills instead of just making you sick. The most common kind of food poisoning bacteria Campylobacter is so devious it hijacks a ride through a protozoa(which moves away from acid) to make you run to the bathroom every 15 minutes after you're infected. Deadly C. Botulinum form spores which are like invincible eggs that hatch when they are good and ready to go(safe from heat and acid). They can die but their poop(the botulism toxin) is deadly and used by doctors to remove wrinkles by paralyzing face muscles. Not good if it's paralyzing your diaphragm or heart after too much gets in your system. Cholera mostly die but just a little make it thru to your intestines then they bounce back to screw you over. You ever see how bacteria reproduce? It's exponential so once a few get thru you're screwed until your immune system kicks in. There is an algae that is poisonous and fish are left with it's toxins. You eat that don't worry about an organism the toxins will kill you. Yeah, if you haven't caught on by now microorganisms can poison you with their poop. Don't swim in the red tide either. Just don't. Listeria gives zero farts(ELI5 word hehe) about stomach acid, kind of like E. Coli but they need a certain ingredient to do it. So if you eat a food high in glutamate(cheese, nuts, processed meats) they will be happy you are helping them resist the acid. Staph will give you a boil but just die when you cook it. What doesn't die? The poop it released into your food before you cooked it which is toxic. They're a huge fan of cookouts. The human side of things it's hard to throw out those grilled burgers. I for one have taken many many chances. Salmonella doesn't play games, it lowers it's own acidity to feel right at home. Kind of like a bullshark switches from salt to fresh water to just generally be a bully that can survive anywhere. The bottom line? Practice safe food handling techniques. Keep food refrigerated and throw it out when it's expired. Refrigerate cooked food within 3 hours or keep it at a temperature bacteria won't grow(yeah, it will dry out and start to suck at that point, so better to just refrigerate after a certain time). Reheat food thoroughly. I have an iron stomach, I can eat a pizza that has been sitting in the oven from last night. But if one of those clever bacteria survived, it's FML(fart my life).",
"The same way we claim a dogs mouth is cleaner than a humans. The bacteria in a dog's mouth isn't as harmful to us as some of the bacteria that grows in our own...especially the ones that rot our teeth and inflame our gums. As food is consumed by bacteria in the fridge or counter, it's releasing toxins that affect us when we eat them. Those bacterial growths and their toxins are what make us sick, not the food itself.",
"It affects the good bacteria in the stomach meaning that you’re susceptible to many different intestinal problems. Leading some to have a decal transplant to revive the healthy stomach bacteria.",
"Because our stomachs aren't actually that acidic! We are omnivore so we have a medium acidity and we cook our food and chew it well, unlike cats and dogs who don't cook or chew. Their stomachs are wayyyy more acidic than ours and thus kill much more bacteria.",
"Many bacteria that cause food poisoning produce endotoxins that are heat and acid resistant. The bacteria can be killed either through cooking or in the digestion process but the toxin is what makes you sick.",
"Everyone has had good answers so this is well covered. But you know the advertisements showing how much salmonella is found on countertops etc? It's found everywhere. It's on your food too. Your body does a damned good job of killing it though, but high loads get through.",
"The key in your question is \"almost\". There are still plenty of things that aren't dissolved (e.g. your stomach itself), and some of these things can harm you. Some pathogens will resist, sometimes it's some more resistant forms of them (spores, eggs). And as many commenters pointed out, the toxins produced by pathogens might resist as well.",
"Stomach acid doesn’t dissolve anything - I swear this is the most widely misunderstood part of digestion. Acid is pretty good at killing bacteria and so yes you can probably eat some “spoiled” food without dying or even getting sick. But acid by itself has very little digestive power. It does nothing to starch, protein or fat, cellulose, hair, nails, most metals. Come to think of it about the only thing stomach acid alone would dissolve is limestone lol."
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n4v6yb | why is yawn so communicable? | Some say its a presentation of sleep ,where as some say its because of lack of oxygen can someone put more light? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mirror neutrons probably. As you see someone yawn you experience yawning on your end and that process of you understanding their yawn makes you yawn too. E: neurons. yep."
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n4vr03 | How exactly our charging habit affect the lifespan/capacity of smartphone battery? | we all have heard warnings like don't play games when charging, don't leave the charger on for more than 6 hours, etc It is said that it drains the life cycle, but how exactly those things affect the battery (as in, microscopic level) ? some would even bloat the battery which requires immediate battery change. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"With modern batteries, it doesn’t really make that much of a difference. Especially on phones that do any kind of smart charging, ie learning that when you charge it at night it’s on the charger for several hours so it can charge slowly over that time instead of as quickly as possible, or stop actively charging when the battery is full.",
"Li-ion batteries age in a number of ways due to changes inside the battery, for example electrolyte oxidation. How fast they age depends on how you use them. Basically, li-ion don't like fast charging, they don't like heat and they don't like being at the extreme ends of their voltage range. If you want to keep it working for as long as possible, avoid anything that heats them up (gaming while charging), avoid keeping them at under 20% or above 80% for a long time and avoid fast-charging. Keeping them on the charger for a long time isn't a good idea because unless the phone uses a smart charging strategy, it'll be sitting near 100% for most of the night, so about 3 months per year."
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n4wljd | How is an animal or human able to sense where on its body something is touching its skin? I know there are topographical 'maps'in their brains, but how does this translate to an individual knowing where on its body the touch is being applied? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The individual touch-sensitive nerves all over your skin are connected to that \"map\" in your brain. Your brain knows \"when this nerve lights up, that's my left index finger\" (or whatever) because it's got a continuous nerve connection all the way out to that physical location. Areas with high nerve density (fingertips, lips, genitals, etc.) have very good resolution...you can feel very fine changes in position. The use correspondingly more brain space to process. Areas with low nerve density, like your back, have lousy resolution because one nerve is covering a much larger area"
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n4wz0g | How come people will enjoy foods they are normally disgusted by only when having marijuana induced munchies? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Might be different for everyone tbh I’m a huge texture guy. If it has a weird/squishy texture it’s hard to stomach, but when I’m ripped bud, ya it’ll do if that’s what I got around.",
"This is actually my technique for getting over being a picky eater as a child/teen. Once I have a really positive experience with a food stoned, I just tend to like that food going forward even when not stoned. It might be silly but it has helped me expand my tastes quite a bit.",
"Been a daily Marijuana smoker for 25 years as well as most of my friends. We've never heard of this. Sure, it can stimulate appetite, I use it for that. But you won't magically start desiring foods that previously disgusted you. That's not how it works."
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n4x93j | If humans and chimpanzees share ~98% of their DNA with each other, then why do human siblings share only 50% of their DNA? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Humans and chimps share 98% of the available selection of genes from which the choices which define an individual could be made. Human siblings share 100% of that measure - they share 50% of the actual choices which are made from that.",
"Imagine you’re at a buffet. The table next to you is eating rice, beans, bacon, and sausages. Your mom comes back to your table with a big plate of beans, bacon, sausages, and mashed potato. From her plate, she divides half to you and half to your brother. So, while your table has a very similar spread to the table next to yours, you individually only have half of what your mother originally had. Genetics works just like this. We have some genes that chimps don’t, and they have some genes that we don’t - like if we were eating mash and they were eating rice. We’re different, but only a little. Only in a few genes. But when it’s said that you share your DNA with your siblings, that is literal. Your parents *literally* hand you your DNA like mom parcelling out food at a table."
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n4y5xc | I saw a video where geneticist Svante Svabø stated that Neanderthals are our closest primate relative and human and Neanderthal genomes are almost identical. Another video states that "most people of European or Asian decent have 1-2% Neanderthal genes in their DNA". Can anyone explain this? | (Edit: Svante Pääbo, I miswrote his name) | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"By \"1-2% neanderthal genes\" they don't mean \"1-2% shared genes with neanderthals. They mean \"1-2% uniquely neanderthal genes\"."
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n4zb7k | how do parasitical worms survive our stomach acid? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The adults don't, the larvae and eggs do, cause they are covered in sheaths and capsules, and in lower parts of the digestive tract is where they live. But parasitical helminth ( worms) are much more complex and each species is different so any details I give would be just convolution"
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n4zf1u | Our bodies take in Oxygen and convert it to CO2, but Oxygen isn’t the only gas in the atmosphere, so what happens to all the other gases we breathe in? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We just breathe it back out. We don't even use all the oxygen we breathe in - the air we breathe in is about 20% oxygen, and what we breathe out is about 15% oxygen.",
"For the most part, we just breathe them straight back out along with the CO2. In other words, when you breathe in, your lungs diffuse some of the oxygen present into your blood, and they just don't do anything to the other gases... the just get breathed out again along with the CO2. For the most part, anyway. Some gases like carbon monoxide (CO) can also get diffused into your blood because your lungs can't \"tell them apart\" from oxygen. The body can take care of itself when that's happening with very tiny amounts, but if you have something like a gasoline generator or car engine venting its exhaust into a closed space, there can be enough CO to poison you.",
"Nothing really. A little dissolves into our blood, but just as much comes back out and is exhaled along with the CO2. The other gasses in air, largely Nitrogen with a little argon/neon/other trace gases) are fairly inert and don’t have any effect on us when they dissolve in our blood"
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n4zhdc | Why aren't stars near the horizon orange like for the Sun at sunset? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your eye has two types of cells that detect light cones and rods. The cones are responsible for color vision and were have three types of them. They work well for bright light but not when there is little light. The rod only detects the amount of light that hits them not the color. They are a lot more light-sensitive than the cones. So what you see with them is black and white or more exactly a grayscale The result is in the low light condition we do not see color, you have likely experienced that when you in a condition with a low amount of light. If not, just test it. The result is that the stars that all are very dim tend to look just write to us. The moon that is a lot brighter does look red/orange at the horizon. The full moon is on average only 1/400,000 the brightness of the sun. The brightest start is 1/32,000 the brightness of the moon. The 10th brightest start is 1/200,000 the brightness of the moon. You get to 1/400,000 at the 19th brightest start. This number is star excluding the sun. So the sun to the moon is less of a brightness difference than the moon to the average start you can see. The moon might not look bright compare to the stars but it is. So stars tend to just look white because of the brightness and how our eyes work."
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n4zksq | How do they create and trap the scents into wax for candles? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Essential oils are mixed with wax. The wax then dries and traps the essential oils within it. Candle gets lit and evaporates the wax and oils making it smell good.",
"“Scents” are physical things, molecules that interact with sensory nerves in your nose, that your brain then interprets as different smells. So, the first step is getting a concentration of that molecule, usually in liquid form, they’re either made synthetically in a lab, or refined from nature (like essential oils). Then that liquid is just mixed in with melted wax, then when the wax is burnt by the candle it releases those molecules into the air again for you to smell."
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n4zzn7 | how ice and salt can give you third degree burns | how does it actually destroy cells and hurt the same way fire does? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It doesnt. It does damage tissue due to temperature, just the other direction. The salt and ice create a mixture that drops below freezing temperature and kills the cells. The sensation feels like a burn which is why it's described that way sometimes, but thats not what's really going on. Localized frostbite is more accurate but doesn't have that moronic tik-tok challenge ring to it"
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n50h5d | What was the Watergate Scandal all about and why is it such a big deal? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"What started it all: 5 men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate Office Building. Hence why it’s called “Watergate”. This is basically the headquarters of the Democratic Party and holds all kinds of party plans and strategies and secrets that aren’t just available anywhere. It was discovered that these 5 men were affiliated with the Republican Party, the party of then president Richard Nixon. So uh oh, people from the opposing party are breaking into your head quarters to steal things, that’s obviously bad. Then it was discovered that those 5 men weren’t acting alone/on a small scale, people higher up on the Nixon administration new about the plan and that it was going to happen. They were discovered with money that was traced to Nixon’s re-election committee (uh oh!). So now it’s pretty clear that people working to get President Nixon Re-elected hired these men to break into their competitions headquarters to steal documents to try to get an advantage. Then next big question was? Did the president himself know of the plan? Well it was revealed that the president actually had a tape recorder in his office record all of the conversations that happen there. It was then demanded that these tapes be turned into the investigation to see if Nixon had talked about this plan. These tapes were turned over, but it was found that the section that would’ve recorded that evidence was blank, to which the Nixon administration said “oopsie it must’ve broke”. The investigation continued and eventually Nixon was impeached (put on trial) but resigned before he could be found guilty and forcibly removed from office. TL:DR, political espionage lead to the President leaving office after getting caught. Edit: Nixon wasn’t ever formally impeached because he resigned before a vote was held, but the process was starting and opinion had turned, he no longer felt he had enough support in the senate so got out before the trial started.",
"An incumbent president's associates broke into the campaign office of his opponent's party and stole incriminating information. The question became: Was the president personally involved in the planning and execution of the break in?"
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n513z3 | Why do actors look bigger on screen -- the camera adds 10 pounds? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a lot of ways to manipulate aspects of filming something to make it appear one way or another. Lenses can be used to make someone appear fatter, skinnier, older, more attractive, etc. Hell, Tom Cruise is 5' 7\" but the way they film him hides that fact. The 10 pounds part usually comes from someone appearing on broadcast TV with a regular host they know how to film well from them being on constantly. Likewise with makeup and wardrobe. Meanwhile their guest is just a one off and the crew can't make everyone look good on a whim"
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n5182w | Eye Color Genetics | ELI5: My mom has green eyes, my dad (RIP) had blue eyes. I also have blue eyes, but my sister has brown eyes. I understand basic eye color genetics (blue and green eyes are recessive, brown are dominant) but how can two parents with recessive eye color traits have a kid (my sister) with a dominant eye color trait? No, she is not adopted, theres no scandal here. No milkmans baby or anything like that as far as I know. Is this possible? Please ELI5, thanks. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Eye colors are a bit more complicated. There's a separate set of genes that controls how melanin (the protein making your eyes brown) is packaged. If this gene is mutated (double recessive), you will have light colored eyes even if you have the dominant brown eyes gene. For example, let's say P is dominant good packaging and p is mutated bad packaging. B is dominant brown eye and b is blue eyes. You need at least one capital P and capital B to have brown eyes. If your mom was Ppbb (blue eye due to two recessive color) and your dad is ppBb (blue eye due to mutated packaging), your sister with PbBb would have brown eyes with a 25% chance! The other 75% chance would have blue eyes.",
"Eye color isn't determined by a single gene pairing, so the simple dominant/recessive paradigm we learn in school doesn't work (it does for your tongue being tied or attached earlobes). But eye color is determined from multiple genes so dominant pairings can pop up even if if both parents have blue eyes"
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n518fr | Why do some insects stay in the same place for so long? | Theres a wasp on top of the front door to my house and it had been in the same spot for 2 whole days! | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If I recall, wasps are territorial, which means they have a home that they return to after hunting. So unless actively dislodged or they die, they could keep going back to the same place for a long time. Now if you mean do they literally stay fixed like a statue in the same spot, it has to do with energy. We humans tend to take calories for granted and burn as much as we are willing; most of us have an excess of food. But animals in nature are rarely so confident about when their next meal will be, so unless they're actively getting food (like I said, hunting) or another vital activity like building a nest or mating, they will prefer to just chill. Web-spinning spiders can stay fixed in the same spot for extremely long periods of time because their food comes to them; all they have to do is spend as little energy as possible until the next bug gets caught."
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n51ctl | Why aren't candy and other dessert foods fortified? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"I guess that would be like having fortified sugar. I know I wouldn't buy it. And since it would cost more than the unfortified version, I expect not many others would buy it either. Finally, there'd be a LOT of blowback for the company advertising, \"New, Improved, Chocolate Bars with IRON!\" Waiting for the message of being disabled."
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n51m42 | Why are there so many different types of doctors that only treat humans, yet there are relatively few types of veterinarians that are expected to treat many types of animals? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Supply and demand. There aren’t enough people willing to pay for a specialist for their particular animal.",
"Biology is incredibly conservative and doesn't fix what isn't broken. We have quite a lot in common with other mammals, but ultimately there is less money in animal care than human care. Humans are also easier to care for - a person can tell you their symptoms, and it is easier to do certain medical operations on people because they will cooperate. For instance you have to knock out a cat or dog to clean their teeth, but people will allow it.",
"There are actually quite a few types of veterinarians: [at this time there are 22 veterinary specialties]( URL_0 ) from toxicology, oncology, behaviorists, radiology, to sports medicine."
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n51ngh | How are mirror scenes in movies and TV shows filmed | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Hi :-) Many methods. Other than more recent special effects, there is a lot of trickery with lenses. Tilt-shift lenses: Basically a camera lens that you can tilt and move around. In this case aligning it in a way the camera won't show, even though you'd expect it to be in the reflection with a regular lens. Imagine you put the camera just so it would be at the edge of the mirror, and then move the lens a little so it moves out of the view. URL_2 URL_0 Other methods, such as using a double or twin (Terminator), CGI or compositing... So many possibilities :-) Terminator URL_1 Other methods URL_3 In more recent movies like matrix, it's CGI or compositing. Morpheus' sunglasses, one side showing the red pill, one the blue pill. Some stuff is just effect trickery :-)"
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n522gp | How are indigenous tribes in the Amazon, Africa etc. not developed? Have they never got curious to explore other areas or stumbled into modern societal regions? How have they been so oblivious to the changing world? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Maybe they are aware and still like the way they live Progression doesn't mean it's better. What's wrong with the way they live?",
"I was listening to someone, probably a podcast, say he asked some tribal guy something like this. The guy allegedly replies, “Is it true that people where you come from sometimes kill themselves? That sounds like a terrible place.”",
"What does \"development\" mean? What's so desirable about it? Is slaving away for someone else's benefit for 40+ years of your life like the majority of people do really better than living the way they do? Also, it's worth noting that when they come into contact with the \"developed\" world, they likely get discriminated against, if not downright killed. As an example, in the Wikipedia article about African Pygmy people, under \"contemprary issues in society\" the first thing you read is \"enslavement and genocide\". I don't know about you, but I would not want anything to do with a society that does that to my people. URL_0",
"\"Industrial\" society is not better than the way indigenous people live, just different. We industrialized because we *had* to - we had a rising population and therefore more needs. Indigenous tribes don't necessarily have needs on that scale, so they don't need to industrialize. Also, industrialization has come with its fair share of problems, especially environmentally. Indigenous people don't refuse to modernize because they haven't explored or are oblivious to the changing world, but rather because they have seen the changing world and decided they would rather stay the way they are."
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n523a8 | How do silicone implants decompose in relation to a corpse? What will future archaeologists find next to our bodies? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Anything not biodegradable will remain behind fully intact when a body decomposes. If future archeologists find fully deomposed bodies from this era, they'll find skeletons with all sorts of objects like artificial hips, titanium plates, pacemakers, and yes, even fully intact breast (or other) implants, as well as any jewelry on the body when it was buried. Things like fillers however will decompose, because those are made up of organic materials like collagen or hyaluronic acid that occur naturally in the body anyway.",
"Graves and mummies have been found with jewelry, it's a common to expect them to be found in future graves as well. A few clothes have survived, so that's something which could happen in the future."
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n52idr | Biologically, how is our most common display of affection kissing, when our mouths are a very vulnerable place to disease, germs and injury? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"I think the fact that our mouths are a vulnerable part of us is what gives kissing it's intimacy.",
"That’s exactly it. Here, I trust you enough to give you this vulnerable part of me - second only to the genitals... the mouth is also a very sensory loaded part of the body - taste, touch and smell all colliding there. These senses of the mouth particularly are where our first senses meet the world, food, trust, safety, etc.... there’s some theory that kissing comes from adults chewing food and feeding it mouth to mouth to infants (early humans and some cultures to this day)... Lots to unpack about human behavior"
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n52l0f | How do horses trim their hooves in the wild? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Wild animals are moving around a lot more, and on more varied terrain. Their hooves wear down naturally on rocky or sandy surfaces.",
"There was a similar question asked a week or so ago about maintaining cattle feet and how wild cattle look after their feet. The answer is simple, wild animals are a lot more active and walk over many different surfaces. Any abrasive or hard surface will keep the feet in good condition. EDIT [here is my answer to the cattle question. it’s essentially the same.]( URL_0 )"
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n55a48 | On a chromaticity diagram why is green so different than the other colours? | I often see in colour wheels and chromaticity diagrams that all the other colours blend into eachother really nicely, besides green. Green always has really jarring transitions, and areas where it looks very light even though those areas aren't near the center where everything becomes white. Why does green look so different on a chromaticity diagram than the other colours? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So here is xy chromaticity diagram: URL_1 It is a diagram that contains all the different chromaticities that human can see. The problem is that it is displayed on a monitor. Monitors can't show all the colors taht human can see. Here is xy chromaticity diagram where only the colors that a standard PC display can show: URL_0 The gray area cointains colors taht your PC display can't show. The colors are scaled to gray so it looks a bit dull. But it gets the point across: Most of the colors in the full color diagram are not correct on PC display. So the diagrams that show all colors also have to weirdly scale the colors that the monitor can't show."
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n55jqe | What Entropy Is | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A simple defintion is; the tendency of things in the universe to go from order to disorder. For example, if you drop a glass and it breaks into pieces. You can never drop a bunch of pieces of glass and have it end up as a complete glass. Of course this is a very remedial definition as there's a lot more to it."
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n55ors | Why can't we do different things with both our hands accurately or without messing things up ? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Short answer: our brain. It can focus on one thing at a time. Thats it. No such thing as multi tasking. It can switch back and forth pretty fast. But focus is 1 at a time."
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n55rwn | How do antihistamines treat eye allergies, if the irritants are literally in the eye? | Let’s say you were outside and got pollen in your eyes from the plants around. Wouldn’t it still be causing irritation? Because the pollen itself is still in your eye, so wouldn’t your body naturally produce more tears to flush them out? Or do Histamines control all sensations up there to begin with? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When your eyes are itchy from pollen in spring time, it is caused by the cells of your immune system noting the pollen and recognizing it as harmful to you. A lot of different cells are involved with this immune response but ones with the \"big guns\" are called mast cells. They come on the scene and release histamine, which works to stop the pollen from doing any damage to you. Unfortunately histamine is really really itchy, so you can take an antihistamine to keep more mast cells from planting more histamine. You're right about the pollen leaving the eye through tears - that's what tears and blinking are supposed to do! The problem is that your body has already triggered the immune response, so even after the pollen is gone, it still takes some time for all the immune who were called in for battle to arrive, do their thing until no more threats are detected, then retire to the bloodstream."
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n563uo | What is the relationship between mental health and serotonin produced in the gut? | I understand that 90-95% of our body’s serotonin is produced in the gut. How does this impact mental health? I’d like to understand the relationship between the brain & gut serotonin and if/how it can be altered. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is an active area of research. The \"gut-brain axis\" is a relatively new concept that emerged in \\~2011. First, researchers showed that antibiotic treatment changed the behavior of a breed of mice that are generally quite timid to become quite bold. Then followed up to show that they could then again make these mice timid by replacing their gut bacteria with that of a mouse that did not receive antibiotics. But how does this translate to humans? Well, that is complicated. There have been a few studies that point to an association between bipolar disorder and/or depression and the amount of certain types of bacteria in the gut. However, it isn't clear whether the bipolar disorder causes these changes or if the bacteria causes these changes. Typically, humans that live together share a similar gut microbiome. However, whether two people live together isn't predictive of psychiatric disorders. Another point of view (as you mention) is serotonin. A few studies have shown that patients with depression have more gut microbiota that are involved in the production or metabolism of serotonin. This, however, goes against the (kind of wrong) theory that depression is caused by an underproduction of serotonin. The primary side effect of patients who receive SSRIs (a common antidepressant that increases the amount of serotonin in the inter-neuronal gaps) is gastrointestinal difficulties. So pharmaceutical intervention of the serotonin pathway affects both the brain and gut. But which is causing the antidepressant benefit? Who knows :) So in conclusion. Science strongly supports some association between the gut and brain. However, the causative link between the two remains inconclusive. This will likely be resolved within the next one or two decades."
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n56sx2 | Exactly how do genes mutate? | Like I get that genes mutate, but what causes them and why? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are different reasons for genes to mutate. Three of the most common ways are 1. Your DNA is kinda like a rope ladder with instructions for different things on each step. Radiation act as a cannon ball and come blast away a part of that ladder. Now when your cell tries to read that to do its function, it screws up and you end up with cancers. 2. Your cells are constantly dividing. One of the part that needs to divide is the DNA, so both cells can have the same copy. How that happens is that both the DNA strands are pulled apart, and then the 2 halves are made into 2 whole by adding material to the 2 strands/halves. During this process, it's possible a wrong part is added in the wrong place. And that is another mutation. 3. Third is that when your reproductive cells divide, they also mix and match a few things. This is why you don't have exactly one parent's pure trait or the other, but can have a mix of things. Sometimes, these mix and match can happen with an error. So a part which wasn't intended to be cut, gets cut off, or is matched with a part not matched with before. And you get mutations we see in children where they have something their parent doesn't."
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n57mr6 | Why are there two distinct areas on a calm ocean? | When sailing on a no-wind day most of the times there are small ripples on the water, but some stretches (usually a few hundred meters wide and maybe a kilometre long) have an almost mirror-like calm surface. I could think those differences come from different saltiness levels, currents or residues of a previous boat, but can someone explain this phenomenon to me? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Hi, former sailing instructor. That is where the ind interacts with the water and stirs up little waves. Looking at them with polarized lenses you can get a better idea of their direction and speed. It helps you read the surface of the water and anticipate the wind rather than just reacting to it. It is a very important skill to learn in racing but less so in casual sailing."
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n57o3x | What is Postmodernist theory? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Postmodernism is a philosophical school that mostly criticizes strife for progress and supports \"relativism\" wich basically means that there is no objective reality and everything depends on the respective viewpoint."
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n589p4 | Why does water ruin electronics? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's conductive, and unlike alcohol it doesn't dry quickly so it can seep into all the cracks and make short-circuits",
"Electronics is small amounts of voltage that travel along a path between two points. There can be many different voltages some high, some low, all in the same area in a device. Water you find in the world is full of minerals, which makes the water conduct electricity. This allows the different voltages to mix, which can overload parts of the device which are not able to handle higher voltages.",
"pure water is non-conductive, but once it comes into contact with almost anything, it picks up a bit of that something and becomes conductive, especially salts and metals. This allows electricity to flow to places where it's not meant to flow and completely bypass the places where it's meant to go. At best, you can rinse off the water with alcohol and let it dry out completely and hope it didn't damage anything, at worst it destroys a battery and catches fire."
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n58dsd | where do our immune systems keep the ‘database’ of things it recognizes as foreign, and how can it check this database so quickly? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Helper T cells are immunocytes which work by storing antigens (external proteins on the surface of foreign invaders). When the presence of an antigen specific to the type known by the helper T cell, B cell lymphocytes are stimulated to create antibodies (substances which destroy antigens). Antibodies are specific to the antigens, and must be produced en masse for invasion.",
"We store it in our blood. There are special cells that we make called B cells that produce antibodies. These cells, and helper T cells, roam around your blood and lymphatic system along with antibodies like sentry soldiers searching for any invading army. The moment a virus or bacteria manages to get inside your body, your cells send up a kind of signal flare made of cytokines and histamine. This makes your immune cells come running. If they recognise the virus or bacteria, they can respond in a snap. If they don’t, it takes a little longer to mount a proper defence. This is why you have such a fast reaction when you already have antibodies - because they’re all over your body, and you already have the ability to recognise what you’re fighting."
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n58mq5 | How do calculators work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What do you mean by that? Mechanical calculator, electric calculators, those on your computer? Have you tried: [ URL_10 ]( URL_10 ) I mean depending on the level you're interested in that can be arbitrarily complex. In a **high level (programming) language** (low level = computer readable and fast, high level \"more\" human readable and thus potentially more convoluted and slower) your **mathematical symbols** (+,-,\\*,/) are basically basically **functions** (black boxes that take input and produce output) that take the numbers next to it as input and then replace the whole **statement** (idk 1+2) with it's output (in that case 3). So your input statement of 1+2 is given to a function like add(1,2) which idk looks like this: def add(x,y): return x+y so in that case x is given the value 1 and y the value 2 and so the returned value is 3. However that's sort of a cop-out because all it does is calling more low level functions on your computer that have implemented how addition works. If you're interested in those you might check out: [ URL_8 ]( URL_13 ) Which is a way how to organize your inputs without [PEMDAS]( URL_12 ) [ URL_5 ]( URL_6 ) How you can make those operations with [binary numbers]( URL_11 ), because if you can do that, you can basically hard wire how those calculators work. Here is an example of how it's used for an adder: [ URL_3 ]( URL_9 ) where you basically try to add 2 binary number. Which is actually pretty straight forward. You compare them with an [XOR]( URL_0 ) (exclusive or) operation, which receives two inputs and returns true \"if **exclusively** one **or** the other is true\", so if one wire is running charge (\"true\", \"on\", 1) and the other isn't (\"false\", \"off\", 0) then the result would be that the wire after the XOR device is \"on\" whereas if both wires are off or on, the wire after the XOR device/gate will be off. So it's a pretty nifty way to add the two: 0 XOR O = 0 = 0+0 = 0 0 XOR 1 = 1 = 0+1 = 1 1 XOR 0 = 1 = 1+0 = 1 1 XOR 1 = 0 =/= 1+1 = 2 or in binary 10 or rather 1|0 just like if you'd add 5+5 you go from 1 digit numbers to the two digit number of 10. But as you only have 1 digit of information (1 wire) you only get the 0 not the 1 from your \"10\". So as you can see it already does 3 cases pretty well and the last one also fits on the 0, ... but we still need that carry over digit (the 1) as well, in order to make it 10 or 2 instead of just 0. So what we do is we fork the input cables and redirect them to another **logic gate** (like the XOR) but this time it's an [AND]( URL_7 ) which essentially just checks if the inputs are identical AND true, that is the only case where it's true in any other case it's false. Which as you can see is perfect because it deals with the missing last case without messing up the rest. So: 0 AND 0 = 0 0 AND 1 = 0 1 AND 0 = 0 1 AND 1 = 1 And then we basically take that as our first digit and the XOR as the second one: 0 AND 0 | 0 XOR 0 = 0|0 = 0 0 AND 1 | 0 XOR 1 = 0|1 = 1 1 AND 0 | 1 XOR 0 = 0|1 = 1 1 AND 1 | 1 XOR 1 = 1|0 = 2 Perfect so with this simple logic operations we build a so-called [half adder]( URL_4 ). Now there's one additional problem: What if one of the two inputs already had a carry over digit then the result would be 3 not 2. So as you might have guess by the name the [full adder]( URL_1 ) is essentially just two half adders. In the first step you compute the XOR of the two inputs as well as the AND of the 2 inputs (aka your standard half adder). And then you basically add the carry over bit to that with another half adder. So you compute the XOR of the previous XOR with the carry over bit. And the same for the other path where you take the AND from the previous AND and with the carry over. And in a last step you compare the results of the two AND operations and return true if one OR both have been true (that's why the other is called XOR because the regular OR means \"one or both\". Et voila you got all the addition that you need. Because in order to compute the result of larger numbers all you need to do is add more full adders and do the calculation one digit at a time: 1011 = 11 + 1110 = 14 ------ 11001 = 25 So the first full adder would get FA(1,0,0), so 1 from the first number 0 from the second and 0 from carry over (where looking at the last bit of both numbers) and would produce 0|0 as output. The second would be FA(1,1,0), so 1 from the first number, 1 from the second number and no carry over from the last. And the result would be 0 for the direct XOR sum and 1 for the carry. Now the 3rd is a little more interesting because now we got a carry over bit, so it's FA(0,1,1). Which yields 0 for the sum (would be 1 but with the carry it's 0) and again 1 for the carry over. So for the 4th and final full adder we get FA(1,1,1) which yields a 1 for the sum (would be 0 but with the carry it's 1) and another one for the carry. Which as there is no full adder to feed that into, becomes the final result. So as you can see with some pretty simple wiring ideas and nesting concepts like using the output of 1 half adder as the input of another, to build a full adder or by feeding full adders into each other you can build a calculator that can add numbers as large as you want (given you have enough full adders. And there are similar ideas how to do that for subtraction, multiplication and division. Now you just need to think of a way how to use your binary number to light up those 7 segments on your screen: __ pretend the vertical lines are also just 1 line then it's 7 | | | | __ | | | | __ and vice versa and you got yourself a way how to do basic calculation just by running current through some wiring. The user then basically modifies the path by tapping a switch (number pad). Also if you're really fancy you can use the [IEEE 754]( URL_2 ) standard to use binary numbers to also deal with floating point numbers. Where you essentially do scientific notation so instead of 1 number consisting of 32 places you take the first place to indicate a sign (1/0 = +/-) the next 8 places become and exponent and the remainder is the number. Where the exponent basically is your \"decimal\" point (here it's a binary floating point). The idea is that moving to the left in a binary number means \\*2 and moving to the right means /2 so: 8 4 2 1 1/2 1/4 1/8 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 So the exponent lets you shift your number to the left or right making it bigger or smaller. That way you can reach numbers that are far outside of the 32 places that you've got, BUT you'd lose precision. So you're essentially just giving the order of magnitude and the first digits of that number. So idk 12,345,894 becomes = 12.3 million for example. So now you could have an idea why calculators are both limited in how many digits they can handle and why they might screw up if you go to arbitrary accurate numbers behind the decimal point.",
"Every calculator has these microprocessors embedded in it. Microprocessors are a collection of logic gates, with a lot of if and then's. Like, if this number is pressed, display this. These gates can be programmed in a specific way with the help of codes. My first explanation in ELI5."
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n58ub3 | I want to study the stars, what line of science do I need to pursue for that? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you want to study the stars themselves, out there in the galaxy, burning orbs of nuclear fire, then astronomy is what you're looking for. If you wistfully look up and say to yourself \"we're nothing but specks of dust in this marvelous universe.\",then philosophy might be more your speed. If you look up at the stars and say \"I wonder if there are other living beings out there, and if so, what do they look like and how do they work\", then maybe some branch of biology. The stars can inspire us to many things, and these are only a few of them. :)",
"What about the stars do you want to study? The field is generally known as astronomy, and is typically a subset of physics.",
"As u/mr_indigo states, it usually starts of with Physics. The major field within it is astronomy. The very broad term of astronomy encompasses \"stuff that doesn't happen on earth\" and can be in areas of chemistry, biology, etc as well as many observational areas. The major sub-fields within astronomy might be astrophysics and cosmology. There tends to be a lot of overlap so here are some fairly broad generalizations. Cosmology tends to look at questions like \"existence as a whole\". If you are interested in questions like \"what is the Big Bang\", \"Is the universe expanding\" etc, then these are cosmological questions. Astrophysics will try to explain stuff that happens between and within objects like stars, galaxies etc. The types of things astrophysicists might be looking at would be \"what is dark energy\", \"what is dark matter\". Studying things like black holes and gravitational waves. In terms of your personal areas of study, at a high school and early university life, a lot of it will have to be mathematics and physics to begin with. Pretty much everything will be described in mathematical language."
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n594xj | - what does a water softener do? In fact, what even is hard water? | Don’t say ice. It’s low hanging fruit and you’re better than that. | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Water softener is a term used for solutions that remove minerals from water, used in piping systems to reduce calcification.",
"Normal tap water contains irons, calciums, magnesiums and a whole host of other minerals in it. This depends on the areas the water comes from, the facilities that clean it and the piping it runs through. The more minerals there are, the “harder” the water is. A softener is something that removes some of those minerals, the most common/efficient being a reverse osmosis filter."
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n5a472 | How is it that our brain can perform complex calculations subconsciously for an action, such as calculating 4 dimensional calculus every time you catch a ball, but struggles to calculate the actual numbers in our head? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its not calculating this calculus. Based on knowledge about where is your hand, and seeing where is the ball, it tries to make this two meet. So its not exact calculations based on initial conditions, its more constant adjustments. Also, its not solving this problem in general setup, it is solving it for concrete setup of your body. You whole life you are using your body and your muscles, so most of this becomes hardwired. Also notice how when baby learn how to walk, at first it is very clumsy. Brain does not know body very well. But through repetition brain learns how to use body, on observe and remember base. And it works similarly with every sport. First you are clumsy, and through training your brain learns how to better utilize your body. To sum up, your brain is not solving calculus for general case of catching a ball. Your brain had your whole life to learn how each action affects your hand movement. And now all you need to do is to try to move your hand where the ball is.",
"Mathematics are neither reality nor nature, just a human tool for predicting and breaking down phenomena. Reality on the other hand is where things are really happening, hence you can digest without knowing chemistry, focus your eyesight without knowing optics and even reproduce without knowing biology. Birds can fly without knowing aerodynamics. Science is a man made tool.",
"it's not. At best it's doing it based off of the results of a past sampling, sort of a \"monte carlo\" simulation. The brain knows that when ball looks like this, hand here usually catches it. hand over there does not. It's why kids are so clumsy. They haven't run the simulation enough to know where a good place to put your hand tends to be. & #x200B; Also, the brain cheats. A ball arcing through the air is a great example. It's constantly accelerating, but with how your eyes track it, and your brain focuses on it, it can simplify the problem down to approximate a \"constant velocity\" problem. This is one reason why people struggle in physics classes identifying if an object is accelerating. Veritassium does a decent video on youtube explaining this mental shortcut.",
"I guess this misunderstanding comes from science fiction/tv, which often has a tendency to show brains as super sophisticated computers. But fundamentally, they don't really work the same. A computer at its very core, runs on logic and math. Your brain is primarily a sophisticated pattern recognition machine. When you catch a ball, your brain is calling back to the patterns it remembers about balls being caught. Its why if the ball is a bit heavier cause its wet or something, you might fumble the catch. That's not to say your brain can't do math, it obviously can't, but compared to a computer, its not very good at it. Its not running millions of complex spatial equations when you guess the volume of a room.",
"catching a ball isn't 4D calculus, it's 2D algebra at best unless the ball is spiraling around its trajectory and changing size as the 4D object phases through our 3D plane of existence. Anyway, the first time someone tries to catch a ball, they just move their hand towards the object and hope that the two meet up. Anything other than that comes down to experience from seeing other objects fall, recreating the trajectory in their mind, and replaying it for the current situation. ignoring wind resistance, basically every object will fall in the exact same way due to the constant effects of gravity. You don't \\*need\\* numbers to know \"that ball is going to land...somewhere around this spot\" when you can see the ball heading there in real time.",
"There’s a simple heuristic that allows us to catch a ball. Keeping the ball constantly in your field of vision at a certain angle and you can catch the ball no matter where it’s hit as long as you keep the angle.",
"The same way that a cutting edge processor couldn't compete with a 10-year-old GPU. There are different parts of your brain. Many. The conscious part is, I would argue, the most versatile. It can do, albeit sluggishly, almost all of the things that the other parts can do. It can demand food, or do math and estimation, or wish to reproduce. It is incredibly good at doing *everything*, but it isn't optimized for doing anything. It's super inefficient, but very versatile. Other parts of your brain are optimized for interpreting vision or coordinating movement or speaking, and they're much faster but limited to doing only that one thing. Trying to do complex math with the conscious part is not going to be nearly as fast as using the part optimized for that.",
"We're more akin to Machine Learning algorithms. We just test a new approach to a problem until we get better results, then we remember what we did to get there and we attempt to repeat it. So think of a baseball player at bat. They have been in that position hundreds if not thousands of times. They know what cues to look for to help decide how to swing. There's 0 math involved in the decision making.",
"It is likely there are structures or modules in the brain that perform different tasks, ie the motor cortex doing coordination, the visual cortex interpreting your 2 2d images into 3d space, etc. For most of these the conscious mind has no ability to percieve or directly affect the tasks as they are performed, instead just feeding in data and getting out an answer. There are some people that have traumatic brain injuries or abnormal brains from birth that do seem to gain access to some modules. Look up Savant syndrome and acquired savantism for more."
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n5adkv | Why can’t we just induce medical hypothermia to patients with rabies if they’re showing symptoms? | Okay. So I know with Rabies- you can get the virus and if you get the vaccine for it after being exposed BEFORE symptoms develop, you have a 99.99% chance of survival. However, if even ONE symptom develops before you vaccinate, you basically have a week to live and you’re 99.99% going to die. BUT- I just learned that opossums are basically immune to rabies, because their body temperature is too low for the virus to survive. I work in healthcare and in the ICU, sometimes patients will go under medically induced hypothermia after having a stroke, in order to shut down the bodies organs and allow your body to put all of its energy and health into healing your brain and not consuming energy by tending to the rest of your organs. My thing is... if someone begins to show symptoms, instead of just giving them a week to live.. why not induce hypothermia at first sign of symptoms so the disease cannot continue to survive in your body and dies?? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think it’s an oversimplification to say possums survive because their temperature is low. They likely have multiple mechanisms of survival that have evolved over the course of millennia, like a better immune response. So hypothermia alone won’t save rabies patients.",
"In 2018 there was some studies and tests done, using therapeutic hypothermia in head and neck areas, to reduce metabolism, inflammatory responses and other physiological activities in the brain, but unfortunately some kind of protein made by the virus, prevented any brain immune response to rabies, which is why patients still died."
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n5agdh | When a person dies, how long are each individual cells in their body alive for? How do they know to die too? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Without oxygen the cells is not able to generate ATP which is used in almost all of the biological reactions. So the cell quickly becames chemically inactive. It does not die as such but it will usually become damaged from things very quickly. There are always some damaging chemical reactions happening as wll as infections from bacteria and other things. And whithout the ability to defend itself, repair damage and replace cells the body quickly becomes inrepairable. This can take anything from a couple of minutes to a few hours. This is why chest compressions are so important as it will make sure that the blood still flows throughout the body delivering oxygen to the cells and removing toxins from them so they can at least protect themselves from damage. This means that if we are able to fix whatever caused the heart to stop in the first place the body may be able to recover.",
"Depending on body temperature; if the cells don’t get a supply of oxygen - you are looking at minutes. People who drown in freezing water for 15 or 20 min (sometimes longer) will usually survive."
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n5b94u | the 'Spanish' flu | It was terrible, killing millions. Where has it gone? Is it still around? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are not sure where it started, but the two most likely places are the US and China based on outbreak patterns. The reason it is called the Spanish Flu is that Spain was basically the only country that reported on it as the others were in media blackout during the war. The theorists that think it originated in China think that it was related to the flu strain that came in the 1880s which is why older people seem to have survived it better as they had partial immunity. As for why it was so terrible. That is due to WWI. The armies living in dirty fetid conditions in cramp quarters means disease spreads quickly and troop movements across continents means it spread far. As for where it went? It is still among us. It has become a part of the seasonal flu once a large enough percentage of the population survived it and gained immunity or partial immunity.",
"Well i can tell you that it was called the \"Spanish\" flu because only the Spanish (Spain) media was reporting on it. Everyone else had a media blackout because it was bad for war moral to report it. The gov wanted to play it down like some tried to do with covid. Like many plagues it mostly ran it's course. A virus that's so deadly so fast can't really survive if it kills everyone.",
"We did not have the reasearch tools at the time to track the lineage of the virus. We did not even properly know about viruses at that time. And virus samples do not last long. But we are pretty certain that it was a variant of the H1N1 and closely related to the 2009 swine flu pandemic. It may in fact be one of the first variants of this virus to infect humans which might explain its deadlieness. There are lots of variants of the H1N1 virus infecting both humans and pigs and potentially other animals as well. We do not know which developed from the 1917 influenza specifically or even if all of them did. Most of these only give mild symptoms which is why they have been able to stick around as long and is one of the viruses that give seasonal influenza. However other variants can be quite deadly but this also means that they tend to be controlled rather quickly, if not by the authorities then by the sick themselves staying home and isolating.",
"It's become endemic, meaning it circulates through the population and pops up especially during winter. It has also mutated to become less dangerous. This is the typical process for viruses that jump from animals to humans. Initially, the virus is more dangerous. See, viruses mostly evolve to keep their target hosts alive. If a virus is very deadly then it doesn't spread well. So deadly viruses die out while less-deadly ones stick around and multiply. But when a virus jumps to a different host, e.g. to humans, all bets are off. The virus hasn't adapted to thrive in that host and so it may end up being more deadly. Next, one of two things happens. Either the virus doesn't fare well in humans (because it's just too deadly or doesn't spread easily) and dies out, or it sticks with us. In the latter case, it has the potential to cause a pandemic, because it's a new virus that no one in the world has any immunity to. This is what happened with the Spanish flu a century ago, and what happened with SARS-CoV-2 recently. Because no one has any immunity, the virus can initially afford to be a little \"sloppy\" as far as adaptation to humans is concerned. It can afford to be a little more deadly than your typical 'flu or cold, for instance. Over time, though, people will build up immunity to the new virus. At the same time, the large reservoir of infected people will lead to new mutations popping up. The selection pressure on these mutations will favor those that make the virus spread more among humans. This can include adaptations that just help the virus enter our cells, for instance, but also adaptations that make the virus less severe, because a less sick person is more likely to transmit the virus to others\\* (esp. compared to a dead person). As more and more people become immune, an additional selection pressure starts to build towards simply changing the virus to become less recognizable to immune systems that have already faced it before. (\\*Edit: just wanted to clarify that some symptoms of course make the virus spread more, such as coughing or sneezing. But those aren't *serious* symptoms (normally). What you want to avoid, as a virus, is making people so ill that they don't leave the house and reduce their contact with others. Ideally you want people walking around pretty happily whilst simultaneously coughing, sneezing, blowing their noses, etc.) So, generally speaking, the process of a virus becoming endemic is accompanied by that virus becoming less dangerous to us. This is also what is likely to happen to SARS-CoV-2. It is true that people are predicting that we will be needing booster shots of the vaccine for a while, but that doesn't mean we'll need those forever - at least not the whole population. In a sense, we are also still giving people yearly shots for the \"descendants\" of the Spanish Flu virus - just not everybody but only those who are at risk of death or serious illness if they get infected. This is a likely outcome for SARS-CoV-2 too. But there may be an intermediate period where the level of immunity among the population, as well as the seriousness of the current virus strain makes it a good idea to keep vaccinating a large part of the population, until we're sure that the virus has reached a level where this is no longer necessary. (Disclaimer: the above is what I understand to be the likely outcome given an informed layperson's understanding of immunology and epidemiology. It is not an expert's opinion, and even if it were I don't think an expert would be certain either. But this (AFAIK) is what has always happened with new viruses so far, and so it seems plausible that something similar will happen this time.)"
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n5brv0 | Those YouTube people who manage to form a reverse connection with scammers and hack their cams and PCs, how do they do it? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In quite a few cases, the scammers basically give them said 'reverse connection'. Essentially, a lot of remote desktop software like Teamviewer will have a scam warning built in when accepting the connection - so in order to get around this and not tip off the victim, the scammer has the victim connect to the scammer's computer first, and then press a button to reverse the connection. By pretending to be clueless and clicking randomly the scambaiter can use this window to download files, place viruses that give them remote access later and all kinds of stuff.",
"Create a backdoor connection using a custom remote access tool (RAT) like nanocore. You could also create a file like bankinfo.xml on the desktop that the scammer will open when they access your computer and use that to reverse the connection.",
"A very common method is to allow the scammer onto the home system. Once the door is open, it swings both ways. The White hat hacker can pull up a virtual machine window, downloading whatever \"team\" software the scammer will use to access your PC remotely. While the scammer is on the home PC, the white hat hacker is also in the scammer's PC and can collect and/or delete data, download malware, or even just wipe the system files and crash the scammer's computer."
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n5cdxt | How can single woman carry up to 9 babies in one pregnancy? | How does that happen? It seems to me one whole baby barely fits in there, let alone 9! | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Without modern medicine, all nine babies and the mother would almost certainly die. By that I mean, there is a 0% chance that you would end up with nine live babies and a live mother. You *might* end up with a couple of live babies and a live mother if you were insanely, deity-intervened lucky. That’s okay, though, because without modern medicine there’s pretty much a 0% chance of conceiving 9 babies at once anyway. They don’t fit. The strain on the mother is insane. Most of the time this happens, doctors will terminate most of the babies and leave two or three. The reason they do this is because if they don’t, *most* of the time, most or all of the babies die anyway. This is really traumatic because they tend to start dying when they run out of room - which means it’s a relatively late-term miscarriage. There just aren’t enough resources to go around. But sometimes you can sneak them all through by supporting the mother. *Sometimes*, it works. The babies need to be “finished off” outside the womb - they are always born premature, because there simply isn’t room inside.",
"That’s why a multiple pregnancy is very risky and rare, and the babies come out small and sometimes early. Twins or sometimes triplets can cause complications. 9 at once is almost impossible... almost."
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n5dmi0 | Why does shocking people back to life not work if the person is dead for too long? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's actually a bit of a myth that defibrillators can *restart* hearts that have *completely* stopped. What they do is detect irregular heartbeat patterns, sometimes too faint for a person to detect just by touch alone, and then try to set that back to normal with a shock. If the heart's already stopped there's not much that can be done.",
"Shocking the heart is meant to reset the hearts electrical impulses back to normal if they're not working correctly / in synch with each other. It doesn't restart a not beating heart. And if a person's heart has stopped beating and they're stopped breathing for a long enough period of time there will be tissue/organ death due to a lack of oxygen. For the brain, for example, \\~4 minutes for permanent damage and usually death is \\~6 minutes. Rescue breaths and chest compressions are able to extend that time because you're artificially oxygenating and pumping their heart for them, which delivers oxygenated blood to those organs."
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n5ec2i | Market vs limit orders | Please explain the difference between a market order and a limit order when it comes to buying crypto. Simple enough for a knuckle dragger to understand | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Limit order = You aren’t buying the stock/crypto until the price meets the price you listed. Market order = You are willing to buy at whatever the market price is. Same thing applies with selling.",
"At any given time, there are a lot of limit orders outstanding for both buy and sell transactions. Lets assume the price of BTC is 55,000, but there are the xurrently unfilled limit orders of: - Sell 2 Btc: 55,500 - Sell 3 BTC: 55,300 - Sell 1 BTC: 55,100 - Buy 1 BTC: 54,950 - Buy 1 BTC: 53,000 - Buy 4 BTC: 49,000 This is what we would call an Order Book. These are current orders for BTC that require a specific price to be filled. We can see that even though there are 6 BTC up for sale and 6 wanted to be bought, no trades happen, because they all require a certain price. You can also see here that the \"list price\" doesnt actually appear anywhere. So what happens when you place a new market or limit order. **Limit Order** When you place a limit order, you specify a specific \"worst price\" that you would be willing to oay or receive. In our example above, if you placed either a buy or sell order for the lost price of 55,000, you would not actually trade. In the case where you wanted to buy, no one is willing to sell for 55k. In the selling case no one is willing to actually buy at 55k. This highlights the fundemental risk of limit orders. you may be able to limit your risk by rwquiring a certain price, but you also risk your order never being filled. **Market Orders** Market orders basically just mean you are willing to take the best price offered. So in our example, if you wanted to buy 1 BTC with a market order, it would cost you 55,100. This would actually be above the current market price. This also brings up another facet of markets that we call market depth. What would happen if you wanted to place a market order to sell 6 BTC? You would sell 1 BTC at 54,950 (a pretty good price compared to the list of 55k), you would sell 1 BTC at 53k (not too great), and you would then sell 4 BTC at a very low price of 49k, over 10% below the current list price!! In this case the market order may have actually turned your small gain on BTC into a loss! We call this very shallow matket depth, because there are very few limit orders near the list price, so the larger the amount of BTC you want to buy or sell, it will result in a much different price from the list. If you had used a limit order, you could have avoided selling those last 4 BTC for such a large loss."
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n5egab | I have endometriosis—how does my heating pad make my pain subside? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Heat or ice work for pain relief because effectively they offer two solutions. Heat increases blood flow which promotes the ability of the body to heal. This is more useful for muscular pain such as those muscles in your pelvic area. This is more suitable for pain that is not caused by muscle tears or recent injury. Conversely, Ice slows blood flow and is best to remove inflammation and slow the process. This is why you use ice on a sprained ankle so it helps reduce swelling. Technically ice could help reduce the swelling effects but it isn’t pleasant long term! You should also consider the psychological effects of having something warm and comforting against you when you are in pain compared to something icy and cold. It’s the same reason we like physical comfort when we are sad or in physical pain.",
"I've always thought heat worked by expanding the blood vessels allowing more ibuprofen to arrive in tissues to alleviate the pain caused by inflammation/injury."
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n5esq5 | Fundamentally as an object gets farther and farther away from us, what makes it look 'smaller' in our vision? | I just thought of this a while back and I can't quite wrap my head around it. Say Im at 1 AU from the Sun. It is a big enough ball from my POV. I go 50 AU away, it would appear smaller than it did at 1 AU But what fundamentally causes it to be smaller? I know that since the photons have had the chance to spread more and more away than at 1AU , the sun would appear dimmer. Less photons = less intense light But exactly what is it that causes me to perceive it as smaller? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Geometry, our vision is effectively a cone coming out from our eyes (alternatively the light rays which could possibly hit our eyes must be within that cone). If an object has the same size but a greater distance, then it will take up a smaller angle of our vision and look smaller."
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n5f1uc | Why does thinking hard for a while, make us physically tired? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The brain is an energy hog. It is the organ that uses the most energy and regulates the rest of the body. If you burn through a lot of the brains energy it makes it unable to regulate the rest of the body as well, thus you get fatigued."
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n5fa3d | How do bombs work? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bombs are chemistry. You take a material with chemically unstable properties, and trigger it to decompose. Ideally, you'd like a solid at room temperature to decompose into a hot gas. Holding the hot gas in the same volume as the solid requires enormous pressure, more than the metal container can provide, so the casing ruptures and the gas expands into the surrounding area."
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n5fge9 | How do bats find their way into caves more than 100 meters down? | How do they get there? Why do they get there? Is there any advantage to being that deep into the cave? These are the burning questions I'm asking myself while not doing my schoolwork. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I believe it's to do with echolocation and bouncing the sound off the cave walls, helps them find their way down (This could be wrong)"
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n5fvvu | How does the electricity in our body get there? | I’m referring to the electricity that is involved with the heart beating and brain signals. How does it get into us to begin with when we are a fetus, and how does it keep being produced? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Think of electricity as the flow of charge between a high-energy area and a low-energy area. This is very similar to holding a ball up in the air and letting go: while you're holding the ball, the potential energy is high (it has the potential to fall some distance) relative to when it's on the ground (the potential for it to fall is zero) - the act of falling is the \"electricity\". So our bodies create electricity by using \"electrolytes\", the major players of which are Sodium (Na) and Potassium (K). If we take a single nerve cell and look at how it sends an electric signal down its length, we'll see that the inside of the nerve has a lot of K and the outside of the nerve has a lot of Na. The amount of these is different, and there's a LOT more Na than there is K. Both of these are positively charged, but because there's a LOT more positive charge outside the cell... those ions really want to get in. So that's our potential. Lots of Na outside, less K inside, the ions want to move in to make everything nice and even. Channels open for the Na to rush inside and K to rush out, and now, because they're moving, electricity is formed. Our bodies are able to use this electricity for a bunch of things, mainly cells sending signals to other cells. When the signal is done, those channels close up and pumps (Na-K ATPase) push Na back out of the cell and K into it to reset. This requires chemical energy, rather than electrical, which comes from breaking down sugar.",
"It is not \"electricity\" exactly - it is a cross-membrane potential. That is a difference in charge which is kept separate by a cell membrane. It is established by a high concentration of sodium on one side of the membrane, and potassium on the other. Those concentrations are created and maintained by little sodium and potassium \"pumps\" in the membrane itself. That's what I remember anyway....",
"It's important to note that the electricity in your body is not like the electricity in the wires powering your computer. In wires, electricity means electron flow. In your body, what we're actually talking about is the movement of charged atoms like sodium and potassium (which get in your body when you eat things like bananas!). These charged atoms, or 'ions', are pushed to different sides of a cell membrane, which means that charge is being concentrated in one area. When they are allowed to rush from the area of high concentration to the area of low concentration the 'flip' in charge can be picked up by machines like an EEG as a little blip of electrical potential.",
"The electricity is electro chemical in nature so it is the difference in electric potential between ions in the body rather than just electrons flowing like they do down a copper wire."
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n5g1ab | How does the sun or light bleach the color out of colorful objects? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you throw a blueberry at a window, it will bounce off. If you throw a rock at the window, the rock won't bounce and also the window will break. All of the pieces of the window are still there in a pile on the floor, but it's definitely not \"a window\" anymore. The same happens to colorful objects, but the blueberry is regular light and the rock is UV. The UV breaks the molecules that gave the object its color. Now those molecules are in a pile on the floor.",
"Something known as *photodegradation* It is all about the chemical makeup of an object. The technical term for color fading is photodegradation. There are light absorbing color bodies called chromophores that are present in dyes. Ultraviolet rays are one of the causes of fading because they can break down chemical bonds and fade the color in an object. Other major contributors to fading include visible light and solar heat. Some objects may be more prone to this bleaching effect, such as dyed textiles and watercolors. Other objects may reflect the light more, which makes them less prone to fade.",
"Colourful things are made up from dyes. Dyes are molecules which are lots of atoms bonded together. Now imagine each atom is a lego brick and a dye molecule is a lego model. Sunlight is made up from particles called photons. Theses are like little hammers. Now imagine if you hit your lego model with a hammer it will break into its individual lego bricks. This is the same process when dye molecules are broken up by sunlight and its called photodegredation.",
"Somewhat more complicated explanation: Actually most chemicals look colourless to us because their electrons absorb in the ultraviolet (very energetic light). The colours we see are actually caused by absorption of unusually weak (long wavelength) photons by electrons. Often the electron can absorb such an unusually weak photon because it is part of and can move over a very big organic pigment molecule, which lowers the energy needed to excite one of those electrons (because the others can jump in and take its place). Now like I said the UV part of the light is absorbed by many more kinds of electrons and this can result in very reactive molecules, break all kinds of bonds and stuff. And if it breaks the big electron continuum of the pigment molecule in two, the molecule will lose its special ability to absorb these unusually weak photons and thus have a colour. TLDR: UV light is very aggressive and destroys many things, especially the often complicated molecules which have colour.",
"Light from the sun is VERY energetic. VERY energetic light breaks down dye (what makes things have colour). Less dye=faded colour.",
"When pigments reflects light, it absorbs and then re-emits the photon. Sometimes the photon imparts enough energy to break one of the bonds making up the molecule, changing the color it reflects.",
"short answer: the chemicals that make things look specific colors can be broken down by the radiation the sun gives off",
"Dyes and pigments are made from molecules that each absorb a certain color of light. Every time one of these molecules absorbs light, there's a small chance it will break. Broken dye molecules absorb colors we can't see, so they no longer act as dyes. That means exposing dyes to large amounts of light will eventually cause them to fade. There are exceptions but that's the most common reason."
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n5h804 | Why are there so many auto-insurance comparison sites? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most of them actually aren't popular at all. Everyone wants to create the next big thing, and many of them probably took a gamble on buying a lot of advertising time, but I'd be doubtful if more than one of them takes off and becomes popular. If I design one app/website, even if it's great, I have to *sell* it to people to convince them it's great. If I design a hundreds apps/websites, there's a *much* greater chance of one of them taking off - and then I can invest more development time in that one.",
"Auto rates fluctuate all the time, throughout the yr. Its even \"recommended\" to jump ship every 6 months (or 1 yr) just so you get better rates. I work for a major company and people leave (or come back) all the time",
"They are acting as online insurance brokers, and insurance brokers have long existed... those are the places with names like John Smith Insurance or another name that's not one of the big insurance companies. They take your info and compare various carriers for your specific requirements (car, age, marital status, accident/ticket history, multiline discounts, etc) and can present you with different rates. These brokers make a commission for referring customers to GEICO/Progressive/AllState, etc. Since the data for vehicles information and drivers info is all centralized in DMV databases and easy to access if have rights to do so, it's pretty easy to set up an online automated quote tool."
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n5hpah | Why does music have any sway over our mood? | Why can a beat I've never heard before get me amped up or a melody bring me to tears? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[Adam Neely]( URL_0 ) explains it very well. I apologize that it is a long video and I cannot paraphrase any of it or I’d only embarrass myself trying. It’s actually a video that I discovered on Reddit."
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n5hrqn | How Does 1 in 10000 work? | Ive always wondered about this: Lets say there is a chance of 1 in 23.000 to get a certain disease. But we know that there Are a lot more diseases with those odds Aprox of apearing, would that make the ods lets say 1 in 2.300 of geting a rare disease? Or is it 1 per 23.000 healthy person. Sorry for bad grammar. | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well I'm not quite sure what you're talking about. But when they say there's a chance of 1 in 23000 to get a certain disease, they typically are summing together huge numbers of people. However, within that large group of people, there are always going to be people with higher risk factors, and those with lower risk factors. Those with higher risk factors may see chances much higher than 1 in 23000. To give an example, 1.8% of people get liver dieases at some point in their lives. Which sounds scary, nearly 1 in 50 people! But when you break it down, people who drink a lot of alcohol or use IV drugs get those diseases at much, much higher rates, and people who drink moderately or not at all, get liver disease at much lower rates."
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n5iu1d | Why is there so much emphasis on a country’s birth rate being high enough to continually increase the net population? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Less people being born = Aging population = Less work force = Less taxes = Less money to spend on social security and other things (e.g. pensions) Until relatively recently, western countries had younger populations so our economies evolved around that, industrialization and baby boom guaranteed a steady supply of babies. But now, if we keep getting older and older, we will need to change our economies around that and/or incentivize people to woo hoo more.",
"The easiest way to grow an economy is to simply increase the number of people. More humans = more production and more consumption. Much of the modern global economic system is designed around a basic “there will be more ____ later” assumption. There will be more money later so you shouldn’t hold cash. There will be more young people later to cover your retirement. There will be more sales later to continue growing the company so you should invest now. If these assumptions collapse, then you have to grapple with aging population and stagnant growth issues.",
"It takes more than one person to support each older person in the population. So a steady or shrinking rate will lead to less people to care for older adults and a shrinking economy to pay for other things. Im no expert but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night.",
"Lets take the UK for example. We have an ageing population meaning there are more elderly, retired people than young workers. Because of small birth rates, less people are working which means less money to take care of the elderly. This is why the UK accepts a lot of migrants Essentially, a higher birth rate means there will be more people who are able to pay taxes that benifit the people and/or the country. A small birth rate is also bad news for businesses who may not get enough customers or employees. These are called economical and social impacts",
"I don't think there's generally considered to be a problem with flat population growth. The problem with a declining birth rate is that, down the line, older people will make up a far bigger % of the population. The working age population basically supports children and the retired population in any country. When you have fewer working age people and more old people, it becomes very difficult to sustain the level of economic output, spending on health and social care, etc.",
"because we buy into the idea of infinite growth in a finite space for some ungodly reason and refuse to deal with the consequences of said choice. Since we buy into that fallacy we've put our entire economic system in the idea that there will always be more. More consumers, more to buy more workers more more more more and when it turns out to be less the whole system flops. Long story short? we're greedy and short sighted.",
"I remember there being a specific formula for the economic side of it but cannot remember the exacts, but there is a percentage of population based on average: age to enter workforce, age of retirement, and age of death. These together show that there needs to be a minimum GROWTH of approx 3-8% per year into the workforce to maintain a stable economy. (This is for stable mind you, not a particularly 'booming') This is also workforce only, not enterprise. So there doesnt need to be the new widget, only jobs and people to fill them, so they can pay taxes and 401k's/pensions, so they can retire one day and be replaced. For there to be a growth of either workforce or population, adults needs to have on average 1.4 children (CPA-Children Per Adult). This, again, is only for near-perfect stability, with no mitigating factors. A sudden plague, food shortage, war, or other factor leading to a heavier adult population decrease would sink this perfect 1.4CPA. In general it takes a 1.6CPA to keep a population alive. IIRC no society in history has survived below a 1.3CPA. This means the \"perfect nuclear family\" of mom, dad, son, daughter doesnt actually help, just slows the decline. You need more than half of all families to have a 3rd child. And for every nonbreeding person (LGBTQ, barren couples) the rest of the populace has to make up the difference, or fail outright. So you need to average about 70% of all heterosexual pairs to have 3 children. Again.... just to NOT be in decline.",
"For 50,000 years of recorded human history generally what happens is you are born, raised by your parents, grow up, have kids and then you take care of your parents when they are old. It is one of, perhaps the biggest, reasons for family. With birth rates below replacement levels then either the only child has the burden of taking care of aging parents, or you require the state to do it. Eldercare is expensive. And not even eldercare per se, just the programs designed for older people (Medicare, social security, etc.) Are expensive now, and with an aging population there will be a greater need for those programs (they will cost more) and at the same time there will be fewer workers paying taxes to support those programs.",
"Human life=\"human capital stock\" to most governments. Children, to them, are just future sources of revenue and leverage for them to take advantage of at the lowest effort for them and the highest cost and effort for the citizens. If people stop having kids, the government starts losing its influence and power. The REAL kicker is that citizens outnumber the government by a lot, but the government has convinced enough of people to forget that or focus on fake disagreements instead. If people want to make babies (and hopefully raise them right too), cool, their business, and good luck. But when the government starts freaking out about that not happening enough, they start looking rather suspicious.",
"Because most governments operate a sort of ponzi scheme that requires more people to be born every year or programs start running out of money.",
"Because it's sort of a giant ponzi scheme right now. It doesn't have to be and fixes are sort of simple but not currently politically appliable due to the rich being in charge of govt policy. Eternal growth is not possible and should not be the goal. Sustainment of a particular level of wellness and prosperity for individuals and their family units should be the goal.",
"> a shrinking or steady population count in a bad light. As others have stated, the concern orbits around economy and productivity, and sustainability of these. As but one example, take Japan. Who for so long was regarded as over-populated. Now, with *today's* concepts, this article explains: URL_0 . Many, (as I do), view the world as a whole as being quite over-populated with resulting in dwindling natural resources. This cannot go on forever. And with disregard to it, monies and economies talk first and foremost, no matter what type of a govt's monetary system a country is operating under. Good luck with all that, humans.",
"If a certain business isn’t growing, no one will want to invest money in it. When people invest money, they expect to not only get their money back, but more money back. That “more” is their income. And ideally, when they invest, they will buy a permanent stake in a business which will grow and increase and increase. Once an investor has many such investments, their *investing business* is proven to be growing and now *other investors* will want to give them their own money to invest for them. Now that investor is very powerful and on a rocket ship to the stars. Those people are what Wall Street is, if you play this out for a few centuries. Only family businesses are allowed to just bring home the same profit each year and never grow. That profit is the owner’s income and that’s that. No one will ever invest, because they’d be buying a stake in a stagnant business. And that’s fine. But a family business like this will often be out-competed by some bigger, more dynamic business with a lot of investment behind it. All this is to explain why growth is the basis of everything. It’s not enough to just make money, your profit has to be increasing and increasing or investment goes elsewhere and you lose. These forces add up on a national level. If an entire country’s economy is not growing, they will attract less foreign investment and wind up losing to competition abroad. And if the population of a country isn’t increasing, it’s harder for the total economy to grow. You don’t have children replacing adults as they age out and die. In fact you have bigger problems like a lot of old people around who need expensive care, and no one to fill those jobs. This means you have to somehow make your economy run tighter and faster and more efficient so you can keep growing even while you’re population shrinks. And if we’re candid, the American workforce is already pretty stretched and outpaces many others on productivity. It’s unclear how much more we can give in that regard. So it might be better to take your millions and invest them in another place like Vietnam whose economy is growing quickly. You’ll get your money back faster and more to boot. At the bottom of all this, what it means is that the entire economy depends on rich people’s ability to sit back and earn more money from the money they already have. When they can’t do that, they piss off somewhere else, and not having any investment money around means that it’s harder to start new businesses or expand successful ones. Being able to borrow is not some devil’s bargain as puritanical morons will tell you. Access to liquidity is the key to any health y economy. Otherwise every single actor in that economy has to work exactly within their means at all times and many of them will fail and the whole system will break down."
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n5j5qe | What stops game developers from making a game completely shitty looking on the lowest and gorgeous on the highest settings? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's just a limit to how much you can have different visual settings and run the same game. Some things just can't be changed, such as the underlying physics of the game, the objects, the computations needed to calculate all the interactions, etc. What we can change are things like textures, monitor resolution, light effects, etc. But even on the lowest settings it's still the same game underneath, and thats always going to have a minimum requirement to run. That's the limiting factor in the end"
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n5jdh6 | Why, in general, women’s life expectancy is higher than men’s? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Biologically women do just live longer. But thats only part of it, riskier behavior choices make up the other part of the cause. Also worth noting that while that's the overall trend, it's not the case in many regions due to other factors.",
"Life expectancy is calculated by averaging the age people die. There might be some biological reasons for that, but it mostly depends on the activities generally performed by men and women. There are more male soldiers. More men work in dangerous environments. More men engage in reckless activities. This slightly pushes the balance in favor of women."
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n5k3th | Why 480p now seems me unwatchable, but 10 years ago it was like super good ? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"About 20 years ago, you watched everything on a CRT TV, which is main factor for why 480p seemed okay back then. Those displays were very tolerant of actual resolution of source, meaning that both details and imperfections were often blurred out and you got a nice and smooth TV signal with good following pictures and it was actually sharp because CRT didn't pixelate the analog signal. Nowadays, modern TV use pixel grid, where 480p video has to be stretched to cover whole screen, and this scaling isn't exact number. Meaning some pixels are twice as big while some are there time as big. This leads to major loss of quality. It doesn't help that we have 4k video sources available that makes the loss of quality on a 480p that much more significant.",
"They weren’t 480p, they were 480i the i stands for interlaced. Images back then scanned 480 *interlaced* lines of resolution onto the screen, which meant you were seeing the odd lines scanned then the even lines right after. It happened so fast that you didnt notice. This was because of how televisions worked. When we changed over to computers, they didn’t need the interlaced scanning so people started producing tv in a “progressive” format which is what the “p” means.",
"Because screens used to be worse and 480p was all we knew, its now bad because the screens we watch them on are better and we now know a lot better quality than that",
"Screens are bigger nowadays so you'll notice imperfections more easily than on a smaller screen. 480p doesn't fit evenly into our standard screen resolutions. 480p means 480 vertical pixels. Nowadays, Full HD is 1080p and 4k is 2160p. You can see 4k is double the vertical pixels of Full HD but you can't divide 480p evenly between them. There has to be some fitting that causes loss of quality. Lastly, 480p was usually recorded on VHS tapes. Digitizing them to play on current TVs may generate some differences than if you played the VHS directly in a VCR.",
"If you're referring to YouTube and many other streaming services, I can tell you straight up its because of their compression format and settings. Sometimes when I'm watching a video on YT that has clearly been filmed with a high resolution camera (2k+) I will set my video to the native format because my 1080p monitor will actually SHOW that crisp detail in most of its glory. Granted not all pixels will resolve, but the image is way better. 480p at its best looks good still, and 1080p great, but the name of the game is efficiency, and the lowest bandwidth cost that gets the job done.",
"480p being unwatchable may be a result of not associating any emotions to that format. For me, 480p was an era of a \"super\" 480i: I recorded lots of DV video of family, trips, and such. I even desire powering up old 8bit computers on original 480i CRTs. Viewing older formats bring back a sense of nostalgia. Maybe another example are black and white photographs. Unless you have some emotional connection, such as B & W pictures of family, relatives, etc. you would view B & W photos in general as unviewable. However, still respect them as they were the \"Super good\" at that time period.",
"You're used to higher quality. Way back then, when 480p was the standard you could more easily fill in the blanks. Not to mention screen resolution was smaller, so there was less stretching, too."
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n5k9de | If our stomach is all acidic with HCl, how doesn't puke burn the crap out of us? | Let's just say I had bad food.. | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The acid in vomit can damage your throat, teeth, and mouth and this is a major risk of bulimia. But for the occasional day of throwing up, your throat and mouth are covered in mucus and saliva that does a pretty good job protecting the relatively low concentration of acid in vomit.",
"It does burn us. It's just diluted enough not to do a lot of damage each time, so it's generally not noticeable next to the other unpleasantness involved. Frequent vomiting - due to bulimia for instance - will cause noticeable damage."
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n5klgn | purpose of super large numbers like Grahams number | do the questions they answer [if any] have any real world applications? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For the most part yes. It gets quite beyond ELI5 level, but Grahams Number was constructed to answer a specific question. (Or at least place an upper bound on the answer to a question). The question involved coloring edges of cubes in various dimensions while avoiding certain patterns. Graham's number was an upper bound on the number of dimensions you could have before avoiding that pattern became impossible.",
"I don't think Graham's number in particular has any real-world application. Graham's number is from a field called Ramsey theory, which basically asks \"how big does X need to be to guarantee that condition Y is met\"? Ramsey theory does have some real-world applications when it comes to graph problems. Graph problems are everywhere in computer science and engineering. Also, if you're interested in large numbers (that dwarf Graham's number), I suggest reading this essay: [Who can name the bigger number?]( URL_0 )."
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n5moi7 | Why video games developers leave lots of unused content in the final version of a game? Why they don't just delete it? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Coding in general, and videogames specifically, is a situation where if it works you don't mess with it unless you have to. Changes that shouldn't affect anything else often do, in logic-defying ways.",
"While it is rarely necessary to leave this content in, removing it is a lot of work and introduce a risk of breaking something. Stuff that is easy and safe to remove gets removed, but for everything else it's a trade off that is rarely taken.",
"It's not necessary. Much of that stuff could be removed. But that by itself is a potentially dangerous process. What do you delete? Do you have definitive proof that it's safe to delete? Does the game have some step where every item that might ever be needed gets loaded just once to confirm it's working? Let's say you have some cars in your game and you decide to drop one of them from the random selection of cars driving around the city. Are you sure there isn't a storyline character who drives that car? You took the car out of the random rotation, but are you sure it's safe to delete the whole car's information from the game? A few such things slip through the cracks. In a huge project there could be a lot of such things that happen. It's safer to just leave it in the game than to try to surgically remove it and risk unknown collateral damage."
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n5mow7 | Why is it so hard to cure rabies once you get symptoms? | I've never understood why having symptoms means your death. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Rabbies attacks your central nervous system, so if you're showing symptoms it's already too late as the central nervous system controls many vitally critical functions. Think of it as trying to put out a fire after it has already burned the building down. At that point if even you put the fire out there's nothing left to salvage.",
"Most viruses use your blood as a highway to get around your body. For much the same reason our immune system also uses your blood to mobilize, distribute antibodies, and attack infections. In other words, the blood is a dangerous place for pathogens as our immune system is all around it. Rabies has a trick though, once it's in the blood it attacks our nerves. Our nerves have a super strong, impenetrable outer armor layer that blocks anything from getting inside them, even keeping out our immune system. So that's rabies' trick, it can pass through that outer layer and enter our nerves where our immune system can't fight it, or even know it's there. The thing with our nerves is that they are a one-way road directly to our brain. So once rabies is in the nerves, it's pretty much game over. It might take a week, or a month or two but the virus slowly reproduces it's way up into your brain and that's it. So, to answer your question, you can't cure rabies once it's in the nerves because nothing, except rabies, can penetrate the nerve's armor and once it's in there, it's got an all expenses paid vacation to your central nervous system.",
"Rabies has spread quite far and done a lot of damage before you notice symptoms. It's easy to cure if you get a shot within a week of getting bit because it hasn't done much at that point. But you're already well on the way to dying once you get symptoms.",
"In addition to the other answers, it's difficult for your immune system to attack the virus once it's reached the brain. The key white blood cells are largely prevented from getting out of the blood vessels and among the general brain cells. The brain is harder for pathogens to reach than most organs, but once they are there, it is a very serious problem.",
"When I was 4-5 I’m 59 now I was bit on the face by a dog. He got me in my lower jaw, in my mouth, and under my chin. I knew him and I was rubbing him while he was eating. I didn’t know his growls were dangerous and he turned around and bit me. I had to have a lot of shots for a while after that and after reading this they were probably rabies shots. Ty for sharing this bc recently I have been thinking about those shots. Stay safe all"
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n5mync | Why do most of us need a blanket to sleep even when it's not that cold? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In a state of sleep, typically the heart rate and respiration of an individual slows down. This can cause a chill that a fully awake and alert person might not feel at the same ambient temperature."
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n5o2z0 | What is antimatter? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is a mirrored version of matter with opposite charged and compositional components to electrons protons and neutrons. If the anti matter variant of hydrogen touches a normal matter hydrogen atom they will completely convert into energy with no parts of either remaining."
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n5o864 | How come getting blood from someone else doesn't change your genetics? | If you're at the hospital and you get pumped full of blood, how come it doesn't change your genetics? Is blood unrelated to that sort of thing and I'm just stupid? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's no DNA in red blood cells, platelets, or plasma. Only white blood cells have DNA. Regardless, blood cells don't reproduce on their own. new blood cells are made in the bone marrow. If you get a whole blood transplant, you'll have white blood cells from the donor for about about 2-3 weeks and then they die and get replaced by your own new white blood cells made in your bone marrow. The only way you could wind up permanently changed DNA in your white blood cells is if you get a bone marrow transplant. In that case, the donor bone marrow will continue to make white blood cells using the donor's DNA. It's also important to understand that cells can't change the DNA of other cells. If you get a bone marrow transplant, only the white blood cells made in your bone marrow will have different DNA. They don't change your genome in any other part of your body. Same for an organ transplant. Getting a donor organ means only that organ has the donor's DNA. The rest of you is still you.",
"For the same reason that getting a bacterial infection doesn't change your genetics. Those cells you get aren't part of your body, they're just swimming around in it. Humans aren't just one organism, we're colonies of trillions of organisms. Some of those organisms, the human cells, are directly related to one-another like a big family. Other organisms, like bacteria in the small intestine, are friends we've picked up that help us digest food and fight off mean bacteria, but that aren't related to us and aren't passed down to our kids. Yet other organisms, like malaria parasites, are things that live inside us but that we'd rather didn't do that. We take foreign DNA inside us all the time, and very little of it modifies our own DNA. The only ones that do are some kinds of viruses, and they only do it to the cells they encounter, so only a small portion of the body is modified by those viruses. On average, your DNA remains unchanged."
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n5oy3x | Why are monocultures bad on a farm? | Why does it matter which plant consumes the soil? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Different plants consume (and replenish) different minerals/nutrients at different rates from the soil. Growing the same crops over and over again will deplete the soil of the minerals that those plants consume the most of. If you were to alternate two crops that were complementary (one replenishes what the other consumes, and vice versa), then the soil quality will be better maintained for longer. This is the principle behind crop rotation, which was critical to improve food yields before modern fertilizer was developed. And while modern fertilizer can mitigate this, it also adds another failure mode for the farm (no/interrupted supply). This is ignoring that a monoculture leaves your food supply very vulnerable to whatever blights/diseases that attack those crops, whereas multiple crops means that you might not be devastated by a single disease. \"Don't put all your eggs in one basket\" and all.",
"Different plants consume different nutrients in different amounts, so if you replant the same crop again and again, it'll exhaust some nutrients before others. Different plants respond to different herbicides, so if you replant the same crop again and again, you'll overload the soil. Different plants have different root depths and structures, so if you replant the same crop again and again, you run an increased risk of erosion. It's much healthier for the soil to rotate what crops you plant.",
"A big part that no one mentions below is disease and pests. If a plant is vulnerable to a disease or a pest *the entire monocultural crop is vulnerable.* So, that's obviously bad by itself. But this also means that farmers need to douse their crops added pest- and herb-icides which are harmful to the natural balance of the field as well.",
"You know that annoying person who stands in front of a bowl of mixed candy picking out all the good ones? That is what a monoculture farm does to soil. You need soil to be a nice, balanced “mixed bag”, but every crop has its favourite nutrients so they like to pick out their favourites. If you rotate crops, with periods of rest, the soil stays the same mixed bag. If you keep growing the same crop over and over, eventually your soil degrades.",
"Soil contains a lot of different things. Lets say nutrient A,B and C. Plant A needs a lot of nutrient A, nearly takes all of it. Now is a lot of nutrient B & C in the soil. So you grow plant B, wich needs a lot of nutrient B. In this time nutrient A slowly restores. While B is nearly empty. Than you plant number 3, wich takes a lot of nutrient C. Meanwhile nutrient A recovered and you can again grow plant A. Sometimes also works with just 2 cycles, or a change every second year..",
"Not a farmer or student of farming but an avid gardener who is interested to learn more about this. Monoculture, the growing and harvesting of a single crop, creates an imbalance in the soil as different plants require different levels of mineral content to grow well and be healthy. These minerals are primaily nitrogren, phosphorous, and potassium. Magnesium is also important, as in the pH of the soil. Monoculture requires the grower to aim their soil at a singular goal - keep it just right for a specific crop. This process can damage the soil and surroundung area by, corn for instance, requiring copious amounts of nitrogen which can run off and poison water supplies. This is my incomplete and hopefully mostly correct understanding, but I hope someone else can expand on my jumpoff."
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n5p2fl | How does exercise improve heart health? Reverse things like high blood pressure and clogged arteries? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The heart is a muscle. In the same way that working out your arm or leg muscles makes them stronger, working out your heart makes it stronger and more efficient. Exercise also increases your levels of HDL cholesterol, the \"good\" cholesterol that lowers heart disease risk by flushing the artery-clogging LDL or \"bad\" cholesterol out of your system and keeps your blood vessels wider which means lower blood pressure.",
"Exercise and diet both play a vital role, but let's focus on exercise. Regular exercise, which means at least around 30 minutes of moderate physical activity (like a moderate to brisk walk) every day, will specifically impact 3 areas that will help your heart: metabolism, vessels, and the heart itself. For metabolism, when you \"stress\" your body with exercise, you're flipping the switch from \"conserve energy\" to \"use energy\". The body is an adaptation machine, and with regular activity there will be increased emphasis on the \"use energy\" parts of your metabolism. This means better control over blood sugar (prevents/controls diabetes), decrease in LDL cholesterol (which tends to deposit in vessels), and increase in HDL cholesterol (which tends to take deposits away for energy). There's also weight loss, which means you have to move less weight with less effort and have less \"body\" for the heart to pump blood to. For vessels, I mentioned this previously but exercise will help loosen them by slowing down, or even reversing, fat deposits which can effectively scar down and cause narrowing/hardening of the arteries. Stretchy, clean vessels are good, and exercise helps that by promoting brisk blood flow with HDL and fewer markers of inflammation. Amazingly, even if you have heart vessel disease, even regular gentle exercise can help the heart create new branches of vessels around, and in, the heart. For the heart itself, it's a muscle, and exercise makes it work harder, which it adapts to by becoming bigger/stronger. Both high blood pressure and exercise cause the heart to get bigger, but the big difference is that exercise also helps the heart become stretchy, so every time it expands it can take in more blood to pump, and every time is squeezes it pushes a higher amount forward. It's very efficient at this. TL;DR: Regular exercise can help prevent and even break up some of the blood vessel deposits that come with aging/diet, and this improves blood pressure. It can also make the heart a better, more effective pump by making it stronger and stretchier, and encourage new blood vessel growth."
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n5pk41 | Why is it that when we only hear part of a song it immediately gets stuck in our heads but not when we hear the full song? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you hear a full song, say one that is 3 minutes long, it gives you multiple layers of instrumentals and also the lyrics and their qualities for 3 whole minutes. Because of this, your brain passively interprets the song and becomes kind of fatigued. After only 19 seconds however, the brain only absorbed a little and has more time to actively process it. If the song is significantly catchy, it can become stuck in your head.",
"Our brains seek patterns and completion. We invented music and therefore know it’s rhythm and expect it’s satisfying end. If we don’t get that then often we can’t get over it."
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n5qhpq | Why have we not been able to eradicate mosquitoes completely? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mosquitoes are a prey species. They exist just to lay eggs and make more mosquitoes. So although we have been doing our best to knock out mosquitoes more mosquitoes are going to be created. However, the extinction of mosquitoes is not all good - it will lead to the decline of all species that prey on them and force them to eat other foods, leading to a collapse of the food chain.",
"There are a number of reasons, but the main ones being that they are extremely widespread and that there are something like 3000 different species of mosquitoes. Wiping out that many different species spread out over so much of the world's surface is no small job. There is also the environmental impact. Any pesticide that could wipe out a species of mosquito is bound to have other negative effects, and that's generally something we want to avoid. Furthermore, we have no idea how it would affect the local ecosystems to simply remove a species. Scientists are actually very concerned about what could happen if we do that. But there is hope. A year or two ago scientists were able to genetically modify a couple different mosquito species in such a way that it makes them incapable of reproducing. They were planning to introduce them into a couple of isolated areas to test it out and see what happens as a result. Depending on how that works out, they believe they can actually effectively eradicate malaria-bearing species of mosquitoes within ten years.",
"I'm not too well versed on the subject, but have we even attempted to eradicate all mosquitoes?"
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n5rkm9 | What causes things to be water proof? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The openings/gaps in the surfaces or bordering edges are too small for water to fit (\"want\") through. Water likes to stick to itself, a property that can be used in building waterproof or water hardy stuff. For example in phones, gaps are so small that the surface tension of water forbids it to get in. Once it is in you have a problem (due to capillary action) but raindrops don't have much chance when waterproofing is done right."
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n5rmco | How does the seed number store so much information about the map in games like Minecraft? How is such small thing i.e. every tree location the same if I open the seed on my friend's PC? | Title. The seed is so little amount of numbers yet if I go 10000 block south, it will be the same thing as if someone else opened the seed. | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Very simplified example here. Let's say that I use a single-number seed, in this case 4. I use seed * 40 to determine the world width and seed * 30 to determine the world length. I use seed * 1.2 to determine the number of mountains Based on the number of mountains, I use an equation that also uses the seed in it to determine placement of the mountains. Etc etc etc for every single element. So, every person with the same seed will get the same results since they're all being run through the same equations.",
"It's an input into a very complicated algorithm that generates the output, in Minecraft's case a world map. You always get the same output if you have the same input. So how exactly can you even make a simple input into a really complicated output? Let's look at an example of this concept. If you start your car all you do is turn your key, right? That's the input. Just the turn of a key. What's the output? The engine starts, your fuel starts flowing, cylinders start spinning, dozens of moving parts just...start. From the small input. Your key doesn't store any of the instructions to tell your car to start this way, not really. The car has been designed to work the same way every time you turn the key. A seed is this, but for software.",
"It's kinda like what happens when you graph an equation in maths. As long as you plug the same numbers into it as someone else, you get the same cuve shape. Now do the same thing with a more complicated formula and assign sections of the output to things like biome type, tree location, elevation and you end up with a seemingly random map. The other tricky part is that the formula can go on forever like that (like how a line goes on forever) but the software doesn't need to necessarily draw that chunk until you go there.",
"The maps are \"randomly\" generated, that's why they are so big and detailed. So it may decide randomly that this is a forest area, and fill it with randomly generated trees. But computers cannot really do anything at random. The \"random\" computers can do is a predictable, you can think of it as a known list of numbers. And every time you ask the computer for a random number, you get the next one in the list. To make it unpredictable, the random number of a computer takes a \"random seed\". You can think of this as your starting point for the random generator. If you ask two computers for random numbers, but give them the same random seed, the results will always be the same. But how does it keep making different maps all the time, if it cannot really generate random maps? The random seed is usually something like the current time to make sure it's always different.",
"The seed controls RNG, or random number generation. For Minecraft especially that RNG controls everything about the world, down to mob spawns, because it's all \"random\" based on the seed. Or in other words, for something like Minecraft the seed acts as a placeholder number for pseudorandom (fake random) spawns of things, based on other parameters in the game's code."
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n5s3ba | why the average height of a human keep rising? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because better childhood nutrition and medical care results in stronger growth. As an average, people around the world are receiving increasingly better of both.",
"Better living. Better nutrition. Better water, better air. Just a better environment all around. Plus, tall people tend to be seen as more attractive? Or so I keep hearing, meaning that we might be seeing a genetic disposition toward taller people."
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n5sbxl | Why does your body close your throat when you get a allergic reaction. | Why does your body try to kill you because you ate peanuts? I can understand the peanut allergy but why does your body try to kill you. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The allergic reaction causes fluid to shift from your blood vessels to the space outside the vessels. It happens everywhere, and that is what causes your throat and lungs to “swell up” and close"
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n5sd6p | what painkillers are best for what situation? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ibuprofen and Naproxen are better for inflammatory pain like a sprain, cut, or infection. Tylenol (acetaminophen) is good at fevers, headaches, and general aches. Aspirin is also an anti-inflammatory, but it has the rather strong side effect of blood thinning, and thus is not a good option for people with certain heart conditions or on certain medications.",
"Inflammatory pain/everyday pain: NSAIDs, typically ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) or naproxen (Aleve) are most common. Can cause problems such as ulcers, bleeding, and kidney problems. Everyday pain (particularly in elderly) : acetaminophen/paracetamol (Tylenol). Can be hard on the liver. Arthritis pain: when the OTC pain killers don't cut it, other NSAIDs such as meloxicam (Mobic) or celecoxib (Celebrex) can be used. Easier on the stomach, harder on the heart. More intense pain: injectable NSAIDs like ketorolac (Toradol) (really hard on kidneys) or opioids. Nerve pain: not many great options, but gabapentin (Neurontin), pregabalin (Lyrica), and a class of antidepressants called SNRIs (duloxetine and venlafaxine are the parent molecules) can be used. Methadone has also been useful in certain cases. Centralized pain: this is a weird kind of pain where there isn't necessarily anything wrong, but you've been in pain so long that the pain center of your brain misfires and tells you you're in pain. Very hard to treat, but treatment is similar to nerve pain. Migraines: NSAIDs can be used OTC. Generally people need something stronger and will be prescribed a triptan (sumatriptan, rizatriptan, etc.). There are a bunch of new and interesting drugs that just came out that treat and prevent migraines. Tension headaches: A mix of an NSAID or acetaminophen, caffeine, and phenobarbital. Cancer pain: generally opioids. Can step down if the pain isn't too bad. Bone pain (usually associated with bone cancer, chemo, or bone marrow transplant): can use zoledronic acid and/or an antihistamine like Claritin or Zyrtec. This is generally in addition to opioids or NSAIDs. These are the ones I can come up with off the top of my head. It's been awhile since my palliative care and pain management rotation."
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n5sino | Is my water-saving toilet actually saving water if I have to flush twice to empty it? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Typically yes. A low flow (at least in the US) is 1.6 gallons per flush. A normal toilet is 3-7. So even if you're doing 2x every time (and there's really no reason you should need to, especially for urine), you're still coming out ahead.",
"No, it's not. I had a \"brand\" name that wouldn't flush for shit (no pun intended) and spent too much time trying to find a problem with the pipes. There are way too many legitimate low flush toilets out there that actually work to have to put up with a cheap POS that made false claims.",
"that depends, how much water does it claim to save over the average toilet? If it says it uses half the water of an average toilet, and you have to flush it twice, it's even. Then you have to factor in how often you flush a #1 in one flush, vs a #2 in two flushes. Sounds like a good experiment to run. Collect some stats and do the math I guess!"
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n5ssr7 | What is the scientific reason we are so attached to our kids? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Do you mean what is actually happening on a physiological level, or why do we have this physiology? The why is easier to answer. We are mammals, and like most mammals we have a strong social structure that ensures our own survival. Without care, our children would die. We are biologically driven to provide that care. Procreation is the ultimate goal of our stupid monkey brain - and procreation is only complete when our children are successfully raised into independent adults. *How* we are driven to provide that care is rather more complicated. It’s a mix of hormones and neurological impulses. A big part is that we are literally wired up to find small humans cute - and therefore worthy of care and protection. It’s actually the same reason we find puppies cute. Large eyes, disproportionately large head, sporadic movements, soft to touch, high-pitched mews. These are the features of our newborns. These are what activates the “oh, that’s cute” impulse in our brain. Add in some parent-child pheromones, some hormonal changes that happen when you procreate, and you’re off to the races.",
"Children that were taken care of by their parents better were more likely to survive and reproduce, they were also more prone to take good care of their own children, and the cycle continued... Basically, evolution at work."
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n5t6lw | Why does congestion occur as a reaction to sickness? It seems counterintuitive for your body to make it harder to breathe when you’re already fighting a sickness. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Body sees illegal aliens. Body shuts down the border. Isn't going to stop them all, but it may slow it down. At the same time, that border closing is annoying to the surrounding system that relies on regular business.",
"It’s because of how the immune response works. Respiratory illnesses often enter the body via the nasal passages, either infecting the cells there or alerting the immune system. One of the first responses the immune cells cause is inflammation. Immune cells secrete chemical messengers to recruit more immune cells and to cause an increase in local blood supply. The capillaries in the nasal passage become engorged and the tissue swells in response. Mucous cells in the nasal passages are working overtime to trap and contain other infectious particles as well. Hence the swelling and excess mucous production leads to stuffy runny noses. It’s not the virus that does it, it’s your immune system making your nose less comfortable for viruses."
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n5ubej | Why can antibiotics completely wipe out pathogenic bacteria and for the most part leave the beneficial untouched? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It doesn't, it wipes out all bacteria. This is why you are adviced to eat probiotic yogurts as those contain beneficial bacteria."
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n5ud90 | Perfect Eyesight/Prescription Glasses | Hi all, & #x200B; I've been curious about this for a while. Lets say there are two people, one with perfect eyesight, and another who does not have perfect eyesight and wears prescription glasses. If the person with perfect eyesight wears the prescription glasses, does that person see the exact way the person who does not have good eyesight does? & #x200B; Thanks in advance and I hope I was clear! | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Prescription glasses are corrective lenses that allow the person with less than perfect vision to achieve 20/20 vision, or as close to that as is possible depending on the severity of their eyesight dysfunction. If the person with perfect vision puts on the prescription glasses (corrective lenses), their vision through those glasses is all messed up but it doesn’t equate to them seeing the way the other person does without their glasses, although this might give them an idea of how that person feels without their glasses because it does impair their vision while they are wearing them. For example, I have 20/70 vision which means that I have to be no more than 20 ft away from an object to see it while a person with 20/20 vision (like my husband) can see that same object at 70 ft away. When my husband put on my glasses he felt like he would fall over and it made him dizzy and nauseous. I don’t feel that way without my glasses, I just can’t see clearly anything further than 20 ft."
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n5uj4n | How does destructive interference work? | I understand that it’s basically opposite waves cancelling each other out. But I want to know why it works. Sorry in advance, if I’m not clear. | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine there is a big heavy box that you have to drag across the floor, so you call a buddy to help you out. If your friend is pushing from the same side as you, the mix of efforts results in a bigger push, but if he's on the other side pushing againts you, then the efforts cancel each other out. That's basically destructive interference."
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n5uj6c | What does the binary of a computer actually look like, and how does it understand those instructions? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Typically, each component that's using some sort of binary code has multiple wires, and each wire carries one digit. So if there's 8 wires (8-bit) and the first 4 have voltage on them and the second 4 have no voltage, then that could represent 11110000. (Yes pedants, I know there's exceptions). Now there's two main things that 11110000 could represent. It could be a number, in this case 240. It could also be an instruction. Typically, we design processors in a way that they will often take an instruction together with a number. This makes sense, if you want to do \"add 10\" or \"access memory address 42\" then having the instruction and the number together makes things simple. So let's think of a hypothetical processor that has 8 total wires for input and output. We could say that the first 4 wires are for the instruction, and the last 4 are for the number. Let's say we want the chip to take whatever is in memory address 2 and put it into the processor's register (the register is a place the processor holds numbers it's currently working with). We could build the chip so that the command to do that load operation is 0100. So the full command 0100 0010 tells our processor to load from address 2. We could then make an add command and assign it to 0010. So if we want to add 1 to whatever's in the current register, we would send 0010 0001 to the processor. So why is 0010 add? It's because whoever builds the processor gets to build into it the operations the processor does. It's built specifically so that when it sees that code, the wiring does the stuff that is required to add numbers together. Fun fact, those numbers representing operations are called \"opcodes\". If you're curious you can look up opcode references for most popular processors and see what they are, though they are often written in hexadecimal. For example the \"jump\" command for the 6502 processor is 4C, which is 76 in decimal or 01001100 in binary. EDIT: Let me add that there are sometimes special commands on a chip that are controlled by a single wire. There might be, for instance, a \"halt\" wire that controls whether the processor is allowed to run or not, so changing the voltage on that wire will enable or disable the processor. This varies based on what the manufacturer wants to have as a feature on the chip."
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n5wak8 | Can owners of non-profit organizations use revenue as their salary? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Revenue is revenue. You can’t misclassify it. You can pay yourself whatever you want to, that has nothing to do with the non-profit status of your organization. The corporation has to meet the requirements for non-profit classification. You will pay taxes on your income as usual.",
"Profit is very different from revenue. If I have a lemonade stand, I might go out and purchase $5 worth of lemons, and $2 worth of sugar. I mix that with water (that I get for free from my faucet) and make a large pitcher of lemonade. Let’s say that I sell my lemonade for $1 per cup, and the pitcher holds one gallon, or 16 cups. If I sell only seven cups of lemonade, my revenue (the total amount that I take in in sales) is $7. But my profit (the total amount of money I made at the end of the day) is $0…because that $7 was what it cost me to get those sales. But let’s say that instead, it is a very hot day, and I can quickly sell out my whole pitcher. In fact, business is so brisk that I hire my younger brother to help pour the lemonade while I handle the money. For his help, I will pay him $3. Now, at the end of the day, my revenues (sales) were $16, and my expenses were $10 (lemons, sugar, plus my employee). The difference between the two numbers is my profit—how much money the business made",
"IKEA's situation is unique and intentionally complicated. Yes, it was set up that way on purpose as a way of avoiding taxes. The company's founder is a notorious tax dodger, in fact. But they aren't a non-profit. They are a not-for-profit company, which is something in between the typical for-profit business and a non-profit organization. One of the rules governing not-for-profits is that they have to spend, donate, or reinvest their profits back into the business. Many of these companies offer enormously high salaries to their executives and board members as a way of shedding some of their excess cash, and because they can. Without shareholders to answer to, these individuals who control the business can pay themselves as much as they want to. IKEA's founder benefits from that setup, and is one of the wealthiest people on the planet as a result.",
"You can pay you self a reasonable salary. But you can't own a non profit, the government owns a non profit, and lets a board manage it. At least in the US. Unsure about other countries but overall it should be similar. Granted the founders are often board members/officers/tend to have a significant deal of influence So generally a person with an influential position can draw a salary, but it has to be reasonable (and pointing to other companies with similar sizes/business models and saying well their salaries are 300k, so our salaries are 300k works) , the person's participation in a vote to set that salary has to be considered as a potential conflict of interest (and typically the person being given a salary will recuse themselves from voting) and further if the salary is deemed an abuse of authority by the government, you can be charged fines, back taxes, and lose nonprofit status."
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n5womm | What happens if the value of a stock increases or decreases while transferring between brokerages | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You wouldn't be able to sell the shares until the transfer of shares between accounts is completed. When transferring shares between investment accounts, typically the shares themselves are transferred, not the cash value from selling them."
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n5x2q5 | What causes sugar cravings? | Why after eating food or being satisfied do i always feel like having desert or think about sweets? Is this genetic or a habit? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s 100% habit. I remember reading something about scientists years ago encountering an at the time undiscovered tribe somewhere. When they gave them sweats they tried it an spit it out. Sweetness is something that the more you indulge in the more you need to get that same satisfaction. I remember the first time I tried sweet tea in the southern US thinking good God this is really really really sweet. So I think it’s safe to say it’s something you learn to like."
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n5xtx8 | Why is pain transmitted through electrical synapses, not chemical ones? | Hi! I read about the differences between electrical synapses and chemical synapses, where I found out that electrical synapses carry signals much faster as compared to chemical synapses. & #x200B; Given that pain is usually caused by a dangerous and potentially life-threating hazard to the body, why is it still transmitted via the slower chemical synapses, instead of the faster alternative? Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you! & #x200B; Edit: Sorry the question is wrongly phrased. It should be " **Why is pain transmitted through chemical synapses, not electrical ones?** " | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not sure this is a complete answer, but the body has natural painkillers that wouldn't work in an electrical synapse. Can't be distracted by pain while you're fighting or fleeing whoever or whatever caused it. Also, in some cases, for example accidentally touching something really hot, a reflex will kick in before you consciously feel any pain. These might use electrical synapses, and/or really long neurons, but either way you don't need to feel the pain before reacting to that kind of stimulus.",
"Sorry, this is going to be ELI8 and very hand wavy since I only know basic psychology and not as much neurobiology. The answer to every question of \"why is this creature this way?\" is \"evolution\" which basically means we don't know for sure why. There was no logical process behind the design, we only know that it likely conferred some advantage at some point. That out of the way, there are some thoughts about pain. Specifically, there is the lock and gate theory of pain, which basically states that pain signals are often overriden by other sensations (pressure and temperature for example.) Why? We don't know. But we can guess that pain is often an indication that cells have already been damaged. Temperature and pressure indicate cells may soon be damaged and the body cares more about future damage than past damage. So... What does that have to do with chemical vs electrical synapses? Well, chemical synapses are more complex than electrical synapses and can be interfered with in various ways (neurotransmitters can be messed with by having fake neurotransmitters or blocked by blocking neurotransmitters or made to last longer by uptake inhibitors, for example) and can amplify signals (called gain). Thus, chemical synapses are more responsive to the body's current and past states (inhibition, opponent process, etc.) They basically have more ways to \"learn\" and \"change behavior\". If we look at this all together, it basically seems like pain is not actually that important and we want to sometimes suppress or ignore pain given the current situation. Chemical synapses work better for that. Pain may not be as important as you originally stated in your question. So what does use electrical synapses? Many reflexes use electrical synapses. A reflex will often prevent injury and sometimes is triggered by the spinal chord not the brain. A reflex is not pain. So reflexes require the speed advantages of electrical synapses but don't require as much in terms of the \"learning\" advantage of chemical synapses. And least that's what we hypothesize. We don't know for sure.",
"Isn’t it the same thing? Chemical is the movement of valence electrons, yes?"
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n5yc7l | why is it that food containers expand when they spoil? If the container is a closed system and matter can't be created, what causes an increased pressure? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bacteria in the food creates gas as a byproduct. The gas is less dense than the solid matter. This gas takes up more space and causes the container to expand.",
"The matter isn’t destroyed or spawned from the void. It is solids/ liquids converted into a gas. Think how fires put off smoke. That is wood being turned into a gas. That’s why when a fire is done burning the ash takes up so little space. All the mass was converted to a gas and dissipated away"
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n5yfmm | How does air conditioning work? | Both in cars and in houses. I know car heaters work by pulling heat from the engine chamber (idk if that’s the right word, I know jack shit about cars) and I think a lot of houses either use electric coils or gas flames (this may all be wrong, please correct me if so). But I have no idea how air conditioning works. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Air conditioners work by essentially moving heat from one side to the other. The way this works is by exploiting a property of gasses: when you compress them they heat up, and when you let them expand they cool down. In an air conditioner there's a sort of loop containing a gas (we call it a refrigerant). On \"outside\" side of the air conditioner the gas is compressed, so it heats up. That heat leaks out from the tubing into the outside air. Then the gas moves to the \"inside\" side. Once there it's allow to decompress, which causes it to cool. So now the tubing is sucking up heat from the air from the inside side of the AC. The gas then goes back outside where the cycle repeats. So essentially the heat from inside of your house is getting sucked up by the tubing containing the refrigerant gas and getting dumped outside of your house. There's a neat video that indirectly shows how this works. They build a refrigerator that works by stretching and un-stretching rubber bands, which heat up and cool down the same way that compressing gas does. It sucks as a refrigerator because rubber bands are super inefficient for this, but it makes for a neat demonstration of the basic principle of how refrigeration works. [Here's the link]( URL_0 )",
"You know how you can move water from one place to another with a sponge? Wring out the sponge and go back for more water? There are special fluids called refrigerants that can do that with heat. They collect heat inside the house. Pump them outside, squeeze them, and the heat comes out into the environment. Then you pump the fluid back inside the house to collect more heat. Source: am mechanical engineer. Was refrigeration tech."
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfmrvxB154w"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
n5yofc | how do drug cartels in documentaries trust the people who record them and their crimes | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gx45710",
"gx45o6g"
],
"text": [
"As I understand it, it's a matter of building your reputation up as someone who reports what is said and doesn't editorialize or judge, and working through networks of people who come to trust you and vouch for you to people higher up. Not really so different from other industries in some respects. It's not like it's some newbie reporter knocking on the front door of some drug lord's mansion. Getting those interviews is a long and slow process, sometimes taking years, even after you have built up your professional reputation to the point where someone in a criminal organization trusts you to tell their story as they themselves want it told. Both parties generally have some sort of security arrangement too, with the criminal organizations a level of anonymity is part of that (either individual - eg. masks, disguised voices, etc -, or location - eg. blindfolded and driven to an unknown location, etc), and on the reporter's side letting someone know what they're up to and when they are expected back, or a check-in time, etc.",
"Oh I’m sure there’s a level of unsaid trust there. There are obvious consequences to actions"
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
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