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c01yg2 | Physics | why does a Geiger Counter have that distinctive sound when detecting radiation instead of just beeping the intensity? | because the each "tick" is a single particle being detected. one could certainly engineer this into some intensity, but it would be slower, less fault tolerant, and would not give more information. | 3 |
5ry07m | Technology | How does an Oreo package reseal itself without being sticky? Edit: I can't believe how many up votes this got! I was just a bit stoned on my couch eating these fuckers. Next thing you know I'm tits deep in answers and up votes. Thank you!! | what? you don't eat them all at once? When I buy oreo's, like once a year, I buy 2 litres of milk and finish them. | 5 |
c1q3xx | Economics | How is war profitable I was wondering this when I debated war with my brother who said, that at least war and tax money going to the us army is not wasted, since war is profitable. But how is war profitable? The Iraq war cost 5 trillion dollars, which is more money than exists in the entire world. And the US military has an annual budget of 500 Billion, which is about switzerlands GPD. So how can you possibly recuperate that much money? Because that is more money than oil could possibly be worth. So how does the US military make its money back? | I am pretty sure when people say war is profitable they dont mean for the government for the most part, but for everyone else. They mean for the private sector as government will hand out contracts. Defense contracts, logistics contracts, all kinds of contracts etc. I mean whole companies are created and live on just government contracts. Because a lot of these companies live on government contracts, war is profitable as war will get the government to buy more. Take missiles and ammo for example. Yes the government still buys them for training and such, but for war? The check is blank. They can expect their orders to be magnitudes bigger. It is from war that these companies make more money, they become more profitable. I know a buddy that works at a company that supplies small product for the US military. When the Iraq war activity died down, they essentially had low orders and had to let people go. Then when things heated up again, and the government ordered more they hired more people. That's just a small example, imagine a bigger scale with multi billion dollar companies getting contracts in the hundreds of billions. All the destruction, who do you think gets contracts to clean up and to deal with all those occupied places? More contracts more companies, more money, more profits. Essentially, you're creating a problem in which you pay for a solution except a very expensive solution. The government is supply and demand. Then there is economic growth from war at home, which some others can chime in but over simplifying here, war stimulates the economy as government spends. You can see that from WWII and aftermath. | 4 |
l1fv9j | Biology | Why can’t you eat past a certain time at night if you have to take a blood test the next morning? I am supposed to take a blood test in the morning and my doctor told me that I have to do it on an empty stomach, and can’t eat anything after 9pm. I understand how alcohol, for one, could impact blood test results but why food? Asking cause I’m hungry :( | Certain blood tests require you to be fasting. Blood sugar, cholesterol (I think) and others. So you have to be hungry when you take the test. Eating causes sugar and other compounds to go into your blood, and will cause the test results to be wrong. For example, if you were to eat before the blood work, the blood work could come back that you have diabetes, when you don't. | 1 |
cg9mvz | Biology | What triggers the intense coughing when cleaning your ears with Q-Tips? | You have something call "Arnold’s nerve" in your ear which is connected to the "Vagus nerve". The Vagus controls important stuff like coughing and breathing. When you touch the inside of your ear the Arnold’s nerve sends a signal which sometimes the Vagus misinterprets. Instead of telling your brain that you have something in your ear it tells your brain that you have something in your throat. When your brain hears that it starts coughing to remove the nonexistent throat object. | 2 |
k50mgg | Physics | Why is it that if I'm on top of a train and jump I land in a different place, but if I'm in the train & jump I land in the same place?? | Inside the train is surrounded by walls so the air is moving with the car, so as you jump the air doesn’t push against you. When you’re on top of the car the air is not moving with the train car and acts in resistance against you. Kind of like the air is holding you in place relative to the ground as the train car keeps moving. Tl;dr wind resistance vs. lack of wind resistance | 4 |
bzr022 | Technology | How does a video game programmed in a PC get stored in a cartridge that can be played by a console? | Former game developer here, & #x200B; Older consoles had dev kits, hardware that interfaced with workstations for development. Even the old Sega Genesis, you could use the player 2 controller port as a D-sub serial port for debugging. & #x200B; You would write your code. For the NES, it was basically assembly, and the assembler would generate machine code you would flash to an EEPROM dev board, for the PS1, it had a pesudo-C compiler, later consoles from the PS2 and XB1 forward had C/C++ compilers. Hell, the XB1 and PS3 both used Power PC based processors. Later dev kits, you would just "push" the program onto the console and test from there. & #x200B; Now, not all code is platform dependent. Some aspects like game logic is not hardware specific, so you could write and test this code on your workstation. This sort of testing is called unit testing, and it's about proving consistency given some initial condition. I put in a 7, I expect to get a 22. Or whatever. & #x200B; Well, you're asking about cartridge based games. Old consoles relied on older technology. We didn't have NAND flash memory back then. We had EEPROM. You would have a dev cartridge with a programmable memory device, and an interface that would write to it through the cartridge. To erase them, there was a glass window on top you would expose to UV light. The more times you would rewrite this memory, the longer each subsequent write would take, until the thing physically wore out and wouldn't take the program. NVRAM, like what stored your saved game, DID NOT have the memory density to store an entire game, and was too fragile. & #x200B; In manufacturing, they would program banks of PROM devices at a time, before later being soldered to the cartridge board; it uses pulses of high voltage to fuse or burn links internally in the device, the consequence being the structure inside represents the data. All such ROM chips are writable once, and the programming legs on the chip are still there even in the cartridge. They won't do anything, and likely they're "tied to ground" so they are made to do nothing. I'm sure if you hooked that chip up to a writer and tried writing again, either nothing will happen, or you'd destroy the component. | 3 |
7a2bzb | Biology | Is there any way to 'green' the sahara desert and middle east? | The Sahara actually was greener. There are pictographs left on canyon walls showing game animals, giraffes, and other game. These of course were left by humans showing what lived there. It was long ago. The Gibraltar land bridge might not have been breached by rising ocean levels. The Mediterranean may have been a set of salty lakes. There are salt beds under the Mediterranean, the remains of salty lakes which dried up. So during the stone age hominids roamed the Sahara hunting game. The climate was different then. Climate change, the geologic kind which occurs over thousands of years, not what we are doing to the world now which happens in decades, has produced the desert we know now. Yes plans could be devised to change the landscape of regions. It would take cooperation among governments and long range planning. It would take enlightened government by wise rulers. None of this is likely to happen. But we can dream. | 1 |
ioob71 | Physics | How can a black holes singularity be infinity small, but still have mass? Doesn't somthing with mass have to have some kinda volume? | I'm no expert so this could be totally wrong. I think It's infinitely compacted as well. So it still has mass. But all of it is so compacted by gravity that it's literally all at one point. | 2 |
779iii | Engineering | Why do car batteries die from not being used? | Vehicles have a number of electrical systems that are always on or otherwise requiring power (good example is the clock). These slowly draw power from the battery and reduce the charge in the battery. If left too long, the battery won't have the amps to power the starter motor. | 2 |
7sh62l | Biology | Why are humans so resistant to change while being so curious and exploring? | There's a personality trait called [openness to experience] ( URL_0 ). Individuals may have high or low openness (or somewhere in the middle). But society as a whole tends to be led and administrated by law-and-order types who have traits that negatively correlate somewhat with openness. | 1 |
d8lr5j | Chemistry | What is the difference between Shampoo and Body Wash? | When I worked on the VO5 shampoo brand, we launched a body wash in the late 1990’s. All we did was take a shampoo formula, add a small amount of glycerin, a new color and fragrance, and called it body wash. Things are a bit more sophisticated these days but not much. | 5 |
hkg6j2 | Technology | I've learned that video game 'clipping' is caused by high velocity, thin colliders, and too-slow physics updates. Why are terrain surfaces in most 3D video games paper-thin? Why isn't terrain given extra fill/thickness inside and under it to prevent 'falling through the map into the void'? I could see why you might not want to fill under the terrain in a game that features things like underground caves, but thin terrain seems to be present in a huge majority of 3D games (even those without underground features) and is not engine-specific. Why is terrain almost always a fragile piece of origami that's so easily punctured? | So game engines already do this or they would never work at all. The collision engine checks "which side of this triangle am I on?" But if you build one of these engines you quickly find that a hard check clips all the damn time. So you add what's called an "epsilon" to the check. Essentially as you say your wall "thickness" - if something jumped past the wall in my calculation of where it was "supposed" to be, but not by that much, treat it as still outside/touching the wall and move it back outside. Some games do this by just moving things back immediately, some essentially put little "springs" on the object to "pull" it back outside. You can technically make that epsilon as big as you want! But then - you can't make any feature thinner than it. Like, if you want to walk on the roof and in the attic - too thick and it keeps kicking you up to the roof. Also the springs solution (which is otherwise generally simpler/more general) can have weird effects when you're too far from the surface - stuff that clips too far immediately gets *launched* back in the other direction. Sort of like the difference between walking and jumping on a trampoline. You can try to track things more granularly but it all comes down to tradeoffs in performance vs dev time vs accuracy. And there's always some situation the designers didn't think of - like a tire that shoots off at mach 4 when you place it in a whole pile of grenades. In the end, computer physics is limited by its sample rate. If you're doing physics at 30 fps, that tire moved *~~11~~ 45 meters* since your last update. You can sample faster, but then you're making the game slower. FWIW, some games have special logic for "terrain" that treats it as "infinitely thick" - but then your terrain and your building floors work differently, and caves and overhangs become problematic. Source: software dev, wrote several game-style physics/collision systems in college. | 18 |
8io9il | Other | What is an IQ test? Are they real? Where can you take one? And how do they work? | Yes, they're real, but the ones you see on the internet don't really work; for the tests to mean anything they have to be administered by a professional who can prod you for extra information in order to figure out what your thought process is. The tests measure the "Intelligence Quotient," or IQ. Precisely what IQ measures is up for debate; it was intended to be a way to assess intelligence and other cognitive abilities, but it's not great at it as intelligence is a tricky thing to measure (as is defining what exactly constitutes intelligence). That being said, it still definitely measures *something* that seems to correlate with intelligence, and no one's really found a better way to do it, so we stick with it. Honestly, though, the best use of it is either for diagnosing mental disabilities, or for educational placement (particularly for gifted kids). 2/3rds of the population scores between and 85 and a 115, and if you're in that segment, the test doesn't really mean much of anything. | 4 |
a3bd56 | Other | Why are Redwood trees such a big deal? | Well for one, they’re fucking huge. And humans like large phallic object. Two, they’re old as shit. We’re talking hundreds of years. Three, they’re awesome. I rest my case. | 2 |
kx1cej | Biology | How does testosterone affect muscle growth? | Testosterone is a messenger. It's made by one part of your body (testicals, adrenal glands, ovaries) and the message it sends is basically "be more man like". So when your muscles get the message they are like "f yea let's grow bigger" and they do. It also tells your bones to grow faster, your chin to get broader, your voice to deepen, and other stuff. Everyone has some testosterone in them but men have something like 100x more than women on average. | 1 |
bhcgp4 | Engineering | How is higher octane fuel less likely to cause a misfire than low octane fuel I would've thought it was the other way around. | Higher octane prevents auto ignition in higher compression engines. It can withstand higher pressure than lower octane fuel. Low octane fuel will detonate with the heat and compression before the spark plug tries to ignite the fuel causing a misfire. | 3 |
5ywnu2 | Culture | What exactly is gentrification, how is it done, and why is it seen as a negative thing? | Taxes. It all boils down to taxes. You are poor, and you live in a small, house/apartment in a shitty neighborhood. One day, the assholes next door move out, and a new couple moves in, and starts taking better care of the place. This continues everywhere in the neighborhood and old, falling down buildings slowly get replaced, by people seeking lower cost of living, but generally taking better care of their surroundings. As this is happening, your own property values are going up. "Yay, I have more net worth now!" Except now your property taxes go up. (Or your landlord's do, in which case, so does your rent) Your income hasn't gone up. It becomes harder to afford living there. This, in effect, forces you out of the neighborhood. This is great for people wanting cheaper, but still nice, places to live, but bad for people already living on the edge of homelessness | 42 |
np6pdp | Biology | How does stretching or rolling muscles out help them feel better? | I thought it had something to do with spreading lactic acids through the muscle as lactic acid makes muscles sore so rolling it out dispersed the acid healing in faster recovery time? | 11 |
nmvohf | Other | Why is it that when you have a hypothetical argument in your head you can think of great points and come up with awesome rebuttals but irl your arguments are shaky at best? | Because coming up with a good argument takes time and practice. That argument you have in your head isn't produced in the split second you have before being any slower makes an IRL argument your loss. It's produced over quite a long time, probably a good few minutes but maybe even an hour or more of combined thought, and even then the argument in your head is probably still really incoherent and bad when put to paper. | 7 |
7d8ibn | Technology | How is it so difficult for video game publishers to detect cheating on PC? Doesn't their code have digital signatures? Don't they have third party cheat drivers running concurrently? How are PC players able to defeat this and continue to ruin multiplayer games? Is their no practical way to prevent players from cheating in multiplayer? I could care less what folks do in single player but I'm having a hard time understanding how the information coming from a multiplayer client cannot be authenticated and validated and that the client runtime environment has not been currupted. | Former game dev here, This is a bit out of my knowledge and experience, but I do know a couple bits that can explain how some of the cheating is happening. Multiplayer games are predictive - that is to say, when I start moving across your screen, it's because I issued commands from my client that I am moving. This goes to the server and is disseminated to all other clients. I start moving on my screen before the server even acknowledges it got the message. So your client knows who and where I am, and then it receives the command that I started moving forward. Your client will move my character forward indefinitely until it receives and update about my attitude - maybe I stopped or changed direction. The client will then apply this new command and make corrections to make sure it's consistent with the game world on the server. This is all very telling and an important insight. You can do things, and things can be done, out of sync of the server, authority isn't exclusive to the server, and consistency is a carrot dangled at the end of a stick. This sacrifice is made for performance. Games used to be made where the server was the ultimate authority and clients were only slaves, but latency was intractable. So because your client knows of the other players, who, where, and how they are, this information can be stolen from the running client. This would give a player an unfair advantage, a radar of where everyone else is. They know you're coming or where to find you. Hackers can also take advantage of the render pipeline and modify it. It could be as simple as set a surface to 100% transparency, or it may involve a sort of man in the middle attack where the API calls to the driver are intercepted and modified, allowing the hacker to see on the game screen any information about you available to him, such as player, position, and orientation. Needless to say, effort goes into preventing these sorts of hacks, but it's always a losers game. Any attempt to thwart these style hacks are on the hackers own machine, which they have ultimate control over. A persistent hacker will eventually subvert these defenses. Something like an MMO conserves computation and bandwidth by not transmitting to you the game state of the whole world, which is typically why players will suddenly appear from the ether in the far field. They didn't exist in your world until then. So at least there's that. And any logic where the client is the authority can be exploited. For example, in normal gameplay, if there's a latency hiccup, your client might inform the server you are somewhere else than it expected you to be - you turned when it thought you went straight, so the correction takes place on the server. This sort of logic can be exploited to bump you to all over a map. This sort of thing is going to be very game specific. Needless to say, we try to minimize how much of an authority a client is, where the server should always be the ultimate authority, but certain compromises may have to be made for performance. This sort of logic has undergone quite a bit of evolution and was not my expertise, I'm curious where it's at today. Some people are pathetic. They care about the hollow masturbatory sensation up in their taint of winning over noobs more than the challenge and excitement of the game, or the satisfaction of hard earning victory and advancement. They are boring, under developed, selfish, and anti-social individuals and a waste of the effort they put into their cheating, typically the type of guy who at 24 still can't grow a beard. And all you can do is jump servers to find someone worth playing with. And because that is your only solution, these twats bounce across servers and ruin the experience for as many people as possible. I, for one, cannot be bothered, and avoid multi-play with random strangers at all cost. | 3 |
ikar7i | Physics | - when an something travels fast enough under water, it creates air bubbles... where does the air come from?? when something travels fast enough through water, air pockets are created... but where does the air come from?? okay i’ve tried explaining this to several people and it’s difficult so hear me out. ever heard of a Mantis Shrimp? those little dudes can punch through water SO quickly that air bubbles form around them... my question is where does the air come from? is it pulled from the water (H2O) or is it literally just empty space (like a vacuum)? is it even air? is it breathable? my second question- in theory, if it is air, could you create something that continuously “breaks up” water so quickly that an air bubble would form and you could breathe said air? or if you were trapped underwater and somehow had a reliable way of creating those air pockets, could you survive off of that? | Sufficiently fast movement in water can cause super low-pressure zones. The water in these zones boils as the water around it pulls outward, creating a partial vacuum containing water vapor. This is not air. Unrelated but electricity can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which can then be filtered to allow breathing. | 10 |
5y6fsi | Other | How are animated films directed? With live-action the director is physically present to... direct the actors, cameraman, crew, and so on. How would it work in animation where all the parts are so separate? | A relatively new thing that has come about for 3D animation is a special roll called "previs" short for pre-visualization. Between the story-board and the final animation, a previs sits down and does a "crappy" run through of many of the scenes in the movie (basic lighting, low to no texture, really low poly count, unrefined animation with only key time points). A few previs takes can be made of a scene in just a few hours covering with lots of variations to run by the director. The director either approves of one of them or gives a bunch of suggestions to adapt things (almost like a director of a live action movie) and the previs goes and tries a few more takes of the "crappy" animation to adapt to these suggestions which only takes a few more hours. Previs shots that are approved by the director get handed off to the final animators who spend incredible amounts of time getting all the details to their final level and refinement. *EDIT:* Source: I occasionally hang out with the guy who was previs on Sausage Party. He was the one who had the surreal work experience one point of coming in every day for a few weeks to animate food having an orgy, and then sit in a room with a director and talk about which food-sex shots worked or not and why. | 3 |
d9dl4q | Biology | How did early humans survive winters without things we have today like warm clothing? | Humans as they are now evolved in the warm climates of Africa, where cold winters are less of a thing, by the time we went out to colder places like Europe and Asia, we had already mastered the art of making tools and clothes and tamed fire. Early humans also died a whole lot more often than we did due to the many hazards of their environment. | 5 |
cubyy5 | Chemistry | How are 0 calorie drinks sweet? Why can't the chemicals used to make 0 calorie drinks sweet be used to make low calorie foods? | Low calorie sweeteners are substances that are hundreds or thousands of times sweeter than sugar. Since drinks are mostly water and sugar, and the flavoring substances can be present in very little amounts, you can make beverages with very little calories. If it’s lower than 5 calories you can call it zero calories For foods there are 2 problems. First is that, most of the food is made of things that we can digest, so unlike water which is the basis of beverages, things like flour, eggs, fruits, etc; all have calories. The second problem is that several sweeteners degrade in high temperatures, making them lose their sweeteness, so they can’t be baked in foods. | 3 |
eab6jj | Biology | How can drugs like crack, meth, etc make you look so old and bad, but you go back to looking young and good again when you stop using? | Don't know. Some people never come back. Lindsay Lohan is in her early 30s. As mentioned here, lack of diet and exercise. Some users also pick at their skin. This creates a ghoulish appearance. | 3 |
8mvxug | Technology | Why are $25 amazon tablets seemingly more advanced than multimedia centers in luxury cars? | Another factor that someone with more expertise could expound upon is the fact that cars are subject to very stringent regulation. This makes the development and testing of large software programs meticulous and expensive. Thus, manufacturers tend to stick to the bare minimum. | 15 |
n5wak8 | Economics | Can owners of non-profit organizations use revenue as their salary? | 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. | 4 |
ajy1dw | Technology | why is 3G and lesser cellular reception often completely unusable, when it used to be a perfectly functional signal strength for using data? | You only get transferred to 3G connection if you have very bad reception these days. It's not relative, being on 3G *is* worse today than it used to the. | 11 |
josqxt | Chemistry | how do you tell apart synthetic and real crystals/gemstones apart How do jewellers or gemologists ( i think that’s a thing, if so, cool job) tell them apart Edit: sorry for typos | A few different ways! A visual examination with a loupe (a special jeweller’s magnifying glass) will tell you a lot. Genuine stones will have certain kinds of characteristic inclusions you can look out for. Lab grown stones also have particular qualities you can see—subtle striped layers or specific kinds of bubbles that are caused by the growing process in the lab. Plastic or glass stones will have other visual signs, such as being dull/rounded along the edges of facets, have swirls/uneven colouring where dye was mixed, visible seams from a mold, particular kinds of bubbly inclusions. They are poor conductors of heat so may be warm to the touch, and often will have slightly unnatural colours that can tip you off. There is also a tool called a refractometer that measures the refractive index (how powerfully a transparent substance refracts light) of stones. Every stone has a unique refractive index, so you can also identify stones and tell genuine stones from glass or plastic that way. A lab grown stone will read the same on a refractometer because it is chemically identical to the natural stone, but a glass, plastic, or imitation (a different stone of the same colour) gem will show up differently. Hope that makes sense! You’ll generally do the visual exam and find most of the information you need that way, then use a refractometer to confirm. Source: I have a gemmology certification | 2 |
hyrg7f | Biology | if adrenaline manage to makes us stronger on specific emergencies, why haven't we harvest these effects to try to makes us stronger all the time? | Because it causes damage to our body systems increasing the risk of heart attacks or stroke. It can also result in anxiety, weight gain, headaches, and insomnia. | 7 |
6nmum1 | Mathematics | How do Rubik's Cube speed records work if the starting cube can have so many different variations? I know it's randomly shuffled around before starting but surely not all shuffles are equal in difficulty/spins | When you scramble a Rubik's cube, you're never more than 17 or 19 moves away from a solution(I don't remember the exact number, but it's around there). In practice, this isn't how speed cubers work, but the principle is similar. Speed cubers have different processes and memorized patterns of moves to get solve the Rubik's cube. Step one might be get all the edge pieces for one side solved, then solve the corners for that one side, and so on. These moves take about the same amount of time no matter how scrambled the cube is. The only time there is any variance is when solving one step also accidentally solves part of the next step. | 1 |
7kokl3 | Chemistry | Why do most hard candies just shrink down as you suck on them but peppermints get all porous and full of holes? | Why do most hard candies just shrink down as you suck on them but jolly ranchers slice open your god damned tongue? | 14 |
ax8t15 | Biology | Is thimerosal safe? Anti-vaxxer relative sent me a link to this article: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ). Not questioning the safety of vaccines but I'm genuinely curious if thimerosal is harmful in vaccines or not? | It is safe. Yes, it contains mercury, but it's in a form that the body will excrete quickly. You get more mercury from a tuna sandwich, and *that* mercury is in a form that the body only excretes very, very slowly. It's not being used anymore because there was a while panic about it and it's easier to switch to another component than educate the public. | 5 |
6z04n0 | Economics | Why a 3 month extension of the federal debt ceiling is preferable to an 18 month one. | Some decades ago, the Republicans came up with a plan called '[Starve the Beast]( URL_0 )'. That plan is to use tax cuts to force large deficits, and to use those deficits to attack social spending and reduce government interference in society. Debt Ceiling increases are the battleground that these fights are meant to be fought in. The Republican plan has been to force concessions about the budget during these debt limit increases, holding the government's ability to govern hostage to coerce their fellows in Congress to vote for deep cuts to get the government working again. It's essentially a lockout strategy - limited government or no government. Delaying that fight three months instead of eighteen months is a much smaller compromise for Republicans to make. They still get to confront the budget before the next election, and try to force deep cuts, or at least cut taxes again so that the beast will be a little more starved next time. Others would have preferred no delay, banking on the deepening humanitarian crises in the south to drive historic cuts to government spending, strongarming democrats and moderate republicans into accepting deep cuts to get FEMA back out there saving human lives. | 1 |
8sl51w | Culture | The practical purpose of "Sister Cities" | Cultural exchanges happen between them. For example my city and a city and Japan are sister cities and the college students go there and vice versa over the summer. That's obviously not the only purpose but the one I know about. | 1 |
78v8xj | Other | How does thread count work and what makes higher numbers better? | For sheets higher number isn't necessarily better. You're looking for something between 300-800. Any higher and there won't be enough room between the threads for air to flow properly will also feel like sand paper. | 12 |
bbpji8 | Biology | Why do humans have earlobes? | No reason remains apparent. Maybe back in our evolutionary past there was a reason for something else that degenerated into the earlobe when we didn't need it anymore. A popular theory is greater blood flow, warming the ear to prevent frostbite. | 1 |
egqb8p | Biology | Why does the body produce diarrhea when we eat something foul? | Automatic flush system for things your body doesn't like. If you're really lucky, you will auto eject from the top opening too. | 4 |
hstmn6 | Economics | How can large chains (Target, Walmart, etc) produce store brand versions of nearly every product imaginable while industry manufacturers only really produce a single type of item? | Store brands are made in the same factories as major brands. When the major brand has fulfilled their quota, they'll swap out the logos, packaging, recipe, etc, for the store brand's. It is beneficial to both parties because rather than exceeding their quota and having an oversupply of a product, a major brand would be better off to rent their extra manufacturing time and sell their extra product to stores as store brands than to waste it all, as well as the cost of labor. | 2 |
eh1uzy | Biology | How is dosing for medications and over the counter drugs universal? | It depends upon the medication and it’s mechanism of action (how it works within the body). Some medication doses are based on weight, as differences in size change the amount needed for the same result. Other medications are metabolized/ utilized in the body such that the amount available per dose is relatively constant and independent of weight. | 1 |
hrjnze | Technology | How was trance music and the likes made in the 90s, before the release of "user-friendly" software? | The Roland TR-909 was an important instrument in trance music. Check out the Wikipedia page here: [ URL_0 ] ( URL_0 ) | 4 |
6viv8i | Biology | How do we know dinosaurs didn't have cartilage protrusions like human ears and noses? | [Interesting lecture about exceptionally well preserved fossils at the Geological society of London.]( URL_0 ) | 23 |
hqaufg | Physics | How does fish fall out from the sky when it rains? I've seen various occasions (not in person) of fishes falling from the sky when it rains. How do these fishes reach so high in the sky. | A powerful storm like a tornado usually sucked them up and flung them far away. When it landed far away, they can’t see the tornado, so people think it just fell out of the sky. Other times it might have been a flock of birds catching a bunch of fish. A flying predator might have spooked the whole flock, causing them to drop their loads and evade. | 2 |
f2yu9m | Chemistry | What does a beers Gravity mean? I’m having a hard time grasping what a beer’s gravity means. I’ve searched and see terms like Original Gravity and Final Gravity. Then somehow ABV is found out through this process. Need helping understanding the whole gravity thing. | Specific Gravity is the ratio between a substance's density and the density of a reference substance, usually water. For the purpose of calculating ABV, you use the Original Gravity and Final Gravity (the specific gravity before and after adding priming sugar at bottling, respectively). | 4 |
5ulu6y | Other | Why do alligators live in sewers in the movies? | Back in the 1970s, sort of an urban legend circulated that people in New York City were buying baby alligators as pets, but when they got tired of them they were flushing them down the toilet. The natural assumption was that the alligators would then feed on the ample supply of NY rats and grow, and that full-sized alligators now roamed the network of underground sewer tunnels. Some embellishments of the story even included sanitation workers disappearing with only their flashlights or other equipment to be found. Source: Was alive in the 70s. | 1 |
o7aljd | Engineering | How fireworks get their “shape”? How do they explode and create certain shapes in the sky? | Explosions in open air create pressure waves that expand uniformly in all three directions. Fireworks are nothing more and nothing less than explosions in the air, with combustible pieces that burn pretty colors. Their containers however, can impose some restrictions on which directions pressure is able to expand. When you fill them with materials that are carried by the pressure wave, and then restrict expansion directions, you can influence the observed shape from the ground. In general though firework combustion patterns are spherical in shape while each individual element is following a parabolic trajectory downward under the influence of gravity. You get this sagging round shape that gets more pronounced the longer the pieces are in the air. The other way you control the shape of fireworks is by packing things in the firework in creative ways. So when they explode and send things out uniformly in 3 directions, you've aligned them such that they disperse in a neat pattern. Then you use differential fusing, and the relative weights of each element to control how far from the center of burst it is when the pyrotechnic powder starts to burn and give off colored flame. You'll notice with large fireworks, there will be a large central "boom" and then a couple seconds later stuff starts to light up around it. The "boom" is the dispersion charge, and then the heat works its way to the powdered metals that finally burn in open air to create to cool colors and crackling sounds. [This]( URL_0 ) is a good ELI5 example. edit: added link | 1 |
a481ef | Chemistry | How have scientists been able to figure out the shape of cell receptors and what drugs(molecules) can fit in them? To add to that how have they also been able to figure out not only the shape of the receptor and molecule that fits in such receptor, but also the effect the molecule has by interacting with the receptor. If im correct I know some receptors can be acted upon in multiple ways that one molecule that fits in the receptor or can interact with it can be an agonist, but also another molecule maybe with a similar shape can fit/interact in/with the same receptor. Scientist obviously can't microscope down to the molecular level to analyze a receptor which is most likely a highly complex 3D Functional portion, so how were we able to come this far to analyze and know the shape of the receptor and its chemical properties. I know scientist can analyze stand alone molecules themselves through NMR, Electronegativity analysis, using ligands; but I don't see how that could be possible being that a receptor is not stand alone and the process of trying to isolate it from the cell would either degrade it or cause it to become unstable. I know I probable asked this question in a way that could possibly need in depth explanation but understanding processes and deducing things to its smaller subunits really interest me which is why many things in biochemistry interest me. If I am also incorrect on anything stated please feel free to correct me. | One possible method is directed evolution. We guide evolution to create billions of molecules, and those that don’t work are removed, until you are left with good matches. Here’s how it works: Let’s say I had a cell receptor that causes the cell to absorb insulin. I extract the cell receptor from the cell, either directly or by copying the genetic code for it into bacteria & extracting the protein from there. Now I stick these receptors to a surface, such that they cannot move. I now create a billion/trillion uniquely different M13 bacteriophages (a virus that infects E Coli bacteria), and flow them over the surface. Those that bind are stuck, while those that don’t bind flow through. We then remove the bound phases from the surface using mild acid/alkali conditions, clone them by infecting E Coli with the virus, and repeat for harsher binding conditions (eg higher temperature, faster flow rate, etc). Eventually we are left with multiple super strong binding phage. We sequence their DNA, find the common regions, and synthesize those proteins. We test the effectiveness of those proteins, and we find out which is the protein that binds to the cell receptor. | 1 |
9dhg6o | Physics | Where does the energy come from that keeps the earth's core molten? | Apart from residual heat from the formation of the earth, substantial heat is generated by radioactive decay. A small percentage of the elements that make up the earth is radioactive with a long enough half-life that it's still producing some heat. | 8 |
9naeyb | Technology | why are mobile companies removing headphone jacks from smartphones nowadays ? | It comes down to space. There is a constant drive to make smaller or slimmer phones with larger screens and better battery life. With those kinds of pressures, the internal space becomes precious. From a design standpoint, any hardware component in the phone must be weighed against the space it occupies (and thus deprives from another potential feature). The headphone jack has been redundant for a long time. It is a single purpose physical connector whereas other connectors (like mini or micro USB or USB C) are both smaller and capable of performing the same function as well as other functions. And that's before we get to wireless connection technology (bluetooth). The only downside to removing the headphone jack is forcing the end-user to purchase new accessories that are compatible with the new standard you are moving to. That held off the move away from the 3.5mm for a long time (and no one wants to pick a new format that doesn't become the new standard). Apple went first. In hindsight it makes sense that Apple would be the first since iPhones were more distinct from other smart phones (in both hardware and software) which makes iPhone users less likely to switch to another brand of phone and Apple could promise that the new connector would be their standard going forward. Other phone companies could not be as sure as Apple on these points. | 6 |
e7yujr | Engineering | . Why are large passenger/cargo aircraft designed with up swept low mounted wings and large military cargo planes designed with down swept high mounted wings? I tried to research this myself but there was alot of science words... Dihedral, anhedral, occilations, the dihedral effect. | While stability and cargo loading are a significant factor in the design of military cargo transport aircraft, there are additional factors at play for passenger operations. Noise is a significant factor for passenger operations. If you’ve ever ridden on a high wing aircraft, you would immediately notice the increased engine and aerodynamic noise present in the cabin. The BAe-146 is likely the most successful high-wing passenger aircraft of all time. The noise during flap extension and retraction is startling, if you’re not used to it. Boxes don’t seem to notice the noise. Passengers don’t like it at all. Another factor at play in cargo operation is the ability to use ground effect for added lift in short/unimproved takeoff and landing. Basically, this is extra lift developed by the wing when the aircraft is close to the ground. Think of a layer of air smashed between the ground and wing. The larger space between the ground and wing in a high-wing design takes better advantage of this aerodynamic effect. Lastly, there are high speed aerodynamic forces that tend to favor a low wing design. Most cargo aircraft are relatively slow compared to modern passenger airliners. TLDR; High-Wing cargo aircraft are optimized for heavy lift capability, while passenger airliners are optimized for comfort and efficiency. | 13 |
6zgo04 | Engineering | Why aren't power lines in the US burried underground so that everyone doesn't lose power during hurricanes and other natural disasters? Seeing all of the convoys of power crews headed down to Florida made me wonder why we do this over and over and don't just bury the lines so trees and wind don't take them down repeatedly. I've seen power lines buried in neighborhoods. Is this not scalable to a whole city for some reason? | First you have to understand that there are two types of power companys, coops and utilities. Coops are member run and owned; so each member has a vote in how things are run. Utilities are usually city owned business' that sell power, water, and gas; while coops only sell power usually. Another important thing to understand is that underground power is a newer thing. If you notice any new housing developments going up in your area you may notice that most of the power in the area is underground. It's because of the cost. It's cheaper to place underground in New areas then it is in older simply because these are new and there isn't a need to tear up each existing members yard up. Keep in mind that even though the company may do all the work we still pay for it all due to the hike in power prices they would require to pay for the workers and materials. The cost for these upgrades will always be placed on the co-op membership since technically the membership owns and runs the business and the majority of power company's in the US are co-ops. On the otherside we have Utility companies. You'll actually find that in a lot of places, especially here in Minnesota, will install new underground utilities as needed when they tear roads up to redo them. Again this is done on the city side so is usually handled when you get the old city managers who have run everything out and new ones in, that's when it began in my area at least. Utility companies who are city owned simply have to fit it into a budget they have. And as we all know government and budgets don't ever get handled in a way that's bennificial to the local population because of politics. So for the most part it is simply because your neighbors don't want to pay higher prices to cover the cost to set the new system up and on the otherside you have politics that prevent things from being done. | 38 |
nn57ob | Other | What do restaurants/snack bars/food trucks etc. (nearly any type) do that makes their food taste better than food cooked at home? | One thing not mentioned is restaurants have more equipment than you have at home. Deep fryers, grills, griddles, broilers, etc. Cooking a burger on a griddle that's cooked 50 other burgers and then toasting the bun under a broiler can make a difference. Restaurants also have more ingredients at their disposal while at home we make due with what we have. The restaurant burger tastes better because the restaurant has all of the condiments, and the veggies, and the applewood smoked bacon, and the monterey jack cheese, and the special type of bun, and so on. At home we slap some American cheese on the burger and use a cheap bun with ketchup and call it a day. | 21 |
c7n7h3 | Chemistry | How does Chinese magic cloth work? [This stuff]( URL_0 ) | The cloth itself is multi-layered. Once water is applied to the topmost layer, it undergoes a transformation from an opaque fiber to becoming transparent. The layer underneath, is black. Eventually, the water evaporates and the top layer becomes opaque again. & #x200B; This means it does wear in time. Though I'm sure it lasts quite a bit. | 1 |
j1lc0x | Other | What would be the last services to stop working in case there is no one maintaining them? Like a tougher lockdown. | First or last? You're asking both. First to go would be non-essential cleaning/maintenance on little-used buildings and properties. Stop mowing the lawn at the park that no one can get into. Last to go would be essential communications -- radio and emergency broadcast. You need to be able to tell people where to get help, even if you're not the one actually providing the help itself. | 2 |
6p9lss | Biology | What makes pancreatic cancer so painful? My dad is currently in the final stages of the cancer and I'm just curious I guess. | Doctor here. Sorry to hear about your dad being in the advanced stages. Pancreatic cancer itself isn't painful. One of the problems with pancreatic cancer is that it doesn't give a lot of symptoms until late in the disease course, which delays diagnosis. When the cancer starts growing, it might invade other organs and the retroperitoneum (which is the back of your abdominal cavity and contains a lot of nerves). When it starts invading the capsule of another organ or the splanchnic nerve plexus (which is an important collection of nerves innervating certain abdominal structures), it starts causing pain. | 1 |
69due8 | Culture | Could the internet ever break, either permanently or temporarily, or has it ever done so before? | At the end of the day the internet is a physical presence. People talk about the internet like it's something that's just there. They act like it will always be there and nothing can take it away. In reality the internet is a large collection of fiber/copper cables and a lot of computers. If you cut power or cut the right cables, the entire thing will cease to function. That said cutting the right cables or cutting the right power to enough places is pretty hard to do. But it's not impossible to cut out parts of the internet so that they can't communicate with each other. Entire countries have severed their connection to the rest of the world. It's possible to completely separate north america from the rest of the planet by destroying a couple of cables. Then there's stuff that can be broken within the internet itself. The internet is a human creation, as a result it has flaws. If people mess with the right software or the right components they can impair its function. Attacks on the DNS server can impact security or the ability for the everyday user to easily use the internet. Some other clever strategies can overload the internet with traffic, causing traffic to be directed to certain locations or slowing it to a crawl. | 12 |
ghe45g | Biology | How do babies form into the right shape? How do the cells know how to arrange themselves | Everything that has DNA has socalled "Hox-genes" While your genes describe the entirety of you, the Hox-genes is the portion specifially for structure and placements. In the movie Annihilation, they stumble upon a small village, with plants in humanoid shapes. After some discussion, they conclude that these plants, somehow, have the Hox-genes of humans, and therefore take their shape. ELI5 TL;DR: Certain genes define position and structure and connections. | 3 |
k5xtmq | Economics | Why does rent build not build credit. | Because it's a recurring purchase, not a debt. You also don't build credit for purchasing groceries each month even though you are committed to eating in order to survive. | 14 |
5mr8yc | Economics | Why paramedics in the United States are paid relatively little, given how vital their jobs are. | Because in America we don't pay people based on their value to society (cops, firefighters, social workers). We pay them based on what people want to spend their money on (entertainment, etc...) | 25 |
6z4fff | Biology | Why will spicy food burn my mouth, lips, eyes, or genitals (if touched) but not my hands or other body parts? I just ate some really spicy ramen and clearly my mouth and lips were burning. Now, if I were to have touched my eyes or genitals with the sauce on my hands, then that would have burned like hell too. However, if the sauce got on my hands, arms, legs, or anywhere else really, there is no sensation of burning. I am assuming this has to do with increased nerve endings in the former places, but I'm not sure. | Nerve endings, but also because of the composition of those areas. They are direct access to the inside of your body. Tear ducts, mucous membranes etc, which are more "exposed" than the skin on your arms or legs or torso. | 4 |
6wpa9l | Economics | short selling stocks and currencies I've read a bit about it but I would really value a more simple and I depth explanation. Thanks in advance! | Say you think your local store is going to have a sale on Star Wars DVDs. You want to make some money. You got a friend who can lend you some Star Wars DVDs. You take those Star Wars DVDs and sell them on eBay. Now the time comes when you have to return your DVDs, you go down to the store where a sale is going on, you buy back the same DVDs at a discount and you return them to your friend. You pocket the difference that is the discount. Alternatively situation: You reach the store and find they're sold out! The only one selling Star Wars DVDs is Neckebard's Super Pricey Nerd DVDs, they charge 20x times what you sold them on eBay for. Though luck, you have to buy it at that price and return it to your friend. Basically, borrow the stock, sell now, buy back later, return the stock. Short selling is considered risky because there's limited profit (the company goes bankrupt and the stock is worthless, you keep the entire amount you sold it for), but the risk is unlimited ( the company announces they have a product that cures cancer, world hunger, and the impulse to commit terrorism, they get a controlling share of the world, you sold for $10, the stock is now $90 bajillion, you're effectively bankrupt). | 3 |
aek510 | Chemistry | Why does plastic turn white when you bend it? | Materials absorb light or reflect light. If you see a green plant, it's because the light the plant *doesn't* absorb is mostly green light. When you bend the plastic, it causes different degrees of imperfections in the material. These imperfections may not absorb any light. When no light is absorbed, you get *all of the light reflected*. When the entire color spectrum (the type of light you see with your eyes) is reflected, then you see the color "white". When all of the color spectrum is absorbed, you see the color black. This is also why pigments in skin cause dark and light skin, more pigments absorb more light so they reflect less light. It just so happens that most plastics create imperfections in such a way that it reflects all of the light. A more complex explanation than that requires quantum mechanics and wave functions, and explains interactions with molecules and the molecule's electron probability density. An ELI5 of that is more confusing than helpful, I think. | 9 |
kaus8q | Technology | What will happen to flash-based sites on 1/1/2021? I keep getting the warning that Adobe Flash Player will not work after 12/31/2021. Will there be another plug-in to download to be able to access flash-based content on websites? Will sites not use flash anymore? | No, the plugin will be removed from browsers/operating systems and any website still relying on it will not function properly | 2 |
dz7lom | Biology | Is smoking tobacco more likely to cause cancer than smoking other things? Is tobacco generally more carcinogenic, or is it smoking in general that makes cancer more likely? | No amount of smoke inhalation is healthy, regardless the source. Tar, which is by definition the byproduct of combustion, is full of stable, chemically reactive molecules that are carcinogenic - they get into your cells and unzip your DNA like scissors through wrapping paper. But what makes tobacco stand out? Well, in the late 50s, where we see a sudden and dramatic increase in lung cancer associated with smoking, is because the industry successfully lobbied for the use of apatite as a fertilizer in tobacco crop, because tobacco isn't food. Apatite is phosphorus rich, which is good, but it's porous, and over millions of years, filters out every radioactive isotope that occurs in nature. So tobacco is fertilized with radioactive waste. We see some of the highest cancer rates today despite some of the lowest smoking in history. | 2 |
5z5atm | Physics | If visible light is on the same spectrum as radio waves, and light is made of photons, what is a radio wave made of? I've heard of photons acting like a water droplet, bouncing up and down, riding it's own wave, but what is that wave? Is it made of some sort of particle? and if it's not, how can light even be on the same spectrum? What makes light special? | Photons. All electromagnetic radiation is made of photons. The photons have different frequencies and different energy levels, but they're all the same thing. Light is only "special" in that humans have eyes to see it. Yes, photons have many wave-like properties. | 2 |
7wyw8d | Other | Why don’t we ever hear about common medical conditions (like asthma or diabetes) when reading about history? Are these modem maladies or did they just have different names? | both asthma and diabetes are what are known in the trade as NCDs - non-communicable diseases. That is diseases not caused by infection (e.g. diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke). Up until the mid 20th Century, the proportion of people dying from NCDs compared to people dying of infection was tiny, so it was under the radar for most people. Nobody cares about the old woman with cancer when half the village has been wiped out by the plague Now NCDs, especially obesity related ones, are now the major killer of people in the developed world, people pay more attention to them | 29 |
eof8su | Physics | How can astronomers tell how 'old' light is? In other words, how can they tell if they are looking at an object 10 light years away or 1009 light years? | for close objects you can use parallax, which is the same way you get depth perception from binocular vision. Only with stars, you take images about six months apart, so the distance between your "eyes" is about 2AU. Basically, how much do the foreground stars move in relation to the background stars. For more distant objects you can either estimate based on how fast the object is moving away from us(redshift), or you can calculate based on how how much light reaches us vs how much light an object of that type is supposed to make(standard candle). Once you know how far away something is, you know how long light took to get from there to here, because the speed of light is known. | 4 |
8i65uq | Engineering | Why does a country downstream from a dam suffer a hit to its water supply? Doesn't the net water flow stay the same? Take Egypt and Ehtiopia. Wouldn't the water volume coming out of the renaissance dam be the same as the water volume going in and the net flow to Egypt remain constant? | It will take up to 15 years to fill the reservoir, during that time flow will be reduced. Also, some of the water may be used for irrigation, that will not be returned to the river. | 5 |
fm3y4b | Physics | How does a permanent magnet get its magnetism? | 1. Magnetism is a property that just is!! It's similar to mass, in that all mater has magnetism. 2. Magnetism is a property that has a strength and direction. That just is! There is no why, it's just what we've noted about the reality of the universe. A permanent magnet is an object that has enough of its infinitesmal pieces of mater oriented so that the itty bitty magnetism of each piece points in the same direction and adds up enough. Sometimes with heating/cooling or electricity an object's magnetism can be changed...but it's all because of the manipulation of the orientation of those individual tiny, itty bitty, chunks of magnetism that were always there. | 3 |
6mhjbi | Mathematics | Is the edge of a circle with an infinite radius curved or straight? I recently came across [this]( URL_0 ) page, and while i think that i understand it a little, i don't see why it would be straight. | The curvature of a circle is defined to be the reciprocal of the radius: κ ≡ 1/r Take the limit as r → ∞, then κ → 0. I.e. path with zero curvature is a straight line. | 5 |
a9pq3u | Culture | As Spain is one of the only countries that has a functioning aircraft carrier, it is rarely spoken of in the same military breath as the likes of France, Germany, U.K or Italy, why is this? | It still has a smaller military, an small economy to fund that military, and no nuclear weapons like France, and the UK. So even though it has an aircraft carrier it is still a league below most of the countries you name. | 5 |
jy92gg | Biology | Why do we remember our embrassing moments when trying to sleep? Only when you’re trying to sleep does your mind rush to unsettling and embrassing thoughts. Why is this? | Your mind is no longer distracted by stimuli. Try mindfulness meditation. It will help you occupy your brain on things other than embarrassing thoughts. | 2 |
jn3lsc | Other | Why did humans start eating onions if it hurts our eyes to cut them? Searching this on google only explained what *makes* your eyes burn when you cut an onion, which I already knew. What I'm asking is why someone would persevere and eat something that caused horrible eye pain as onions do. I love onions, but if I were the first person to bite into an onion and immediately have the most sensitive part of my face chemically attacked by it, I don't think I would have tried to eat one again. | Almost everything we eat looked very different in the wild before we started breeding it, and onions are no exception. I've eaten plenty of wild onions, and they are very small. By the time we cultivated the larger onions, we were used to cooking them. | 5 |
kj3wgm | Biology | When a critically injured person is sometimes told to "not fall asleep or you'll never wake up again" what is actually happening that causes death? and why does staying awake/conscious prevent it? | This was answered in an older thread: URL_0 | 1 |
6y4bd2 | Economics | Why do many multimillionaires collect huge painting collections, and then give them to a museum? | They can often get the museums to hire a compliant appraiser to estimate them at a value far above what the donor paid for them. When they donate it, they write it off on their taxes at the new appraised value, thus saving a bigger chunk in taxes than they paid for the art in the first place. | 4 |
nx5zia | Biology | If our natural body temperature is 96°, why do we feel most comfortable in 70° temperatures? | That’s inside of you. Your skin and limbs are usually colder than this. And it’s the ideal temperature for the body to do its work, but that work generates a lot of heat, which it needs to evacuate. When it’s as hot outside as it is in, getting rid of this excess heat becomes harder, and you feel hot. | 3 |
bxsl8p | Technology | What is white noise? | Radios have an "automatic gain control" (AGC). When the reception is weak, the circuit that deals with the radio frequencies turns up it's amplification to try and get the best signal it can so it can then extract what actual audio it can. When the gain goes up to maximum, all it ends up amplifying is noise, radio interference from outside and random electrical noise generated inside the circuit components. There might be a weak signal hidden in the noise so you may hear a noisy radio signal as well, so it wouldn't just cut out. | 2 |
8d598m | Biology | If a carnivore can’t find prey and is otherwise going to starve, why wouldn’t it just berries, vegetables, etc.? | I think it's like a fish breathing air because the oxygen in the water is gone, it doesn't work like that. | 2 |
7b6hpk | Technology | How can someone recover files that were permanently deleted from a drive? | Deleting a file is like abandoning a self-storage unit. All the stuff is still there, it is just marked as available. If someone needs that space, the old stuff is cleared out. The main difference is they don't make crappy reality shows about deleting files. | 3 |
633lbc | Culture | Why does it seem like all Caribbean islands (Jamaica, Bahamas, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, etc.) seem to be third world countries, with terrible economies and infrastructure? This is not meant to offend anyone from these countries, its just the impression I get being American. Someone I know just got back from a service trip to Jamaica to teach first aid and CPR to villagers and describes a place where everyone is poor, and there are no jobs and no place to go. Are there any particular reasons, historical or otherwise, for this trend? I have been to Bermuda and the Bahamas and even in the high traffic tourism areas you can tell how poor the people are and how sadly hopeless their situations seem. | Historical and geographical reasons. Most of those islands were colonized by Spain in the 16th and 17th century and used to produce sugar and tropical fruit crops. The colonial government had little interest in improving infrastructure, education, or standard of living and many of the residents were slaves. When the Spanish empire started to unravel those islands found themselves suddenly self-governing with little experience or resources. Since then they've struggled with corrupt governments, meddling from cold war superpowers, and the simple lack of resources on an island. | 8 |
cmkfsu | Biology | Does ingesting collagen provide good health benefits or is this a myth? | [It has proven health benefits]( URL_0 ), but is still being researched. You can think of collagen, and also collagen hydrolysate, sort of like a vitamin. Most people get enough from a healthy, balanced diet, but other people need a supplement. Usually your body digests food by breaking it into pieces, moving the pieces around, and then putting the pieces back together. If you have a balanced diet, your body can make its own collagen out of meats and vitamins, but if your body is old or sick it might be slow at the break-down or build-up steps. That can result is less collagen than your body needs. Collagen Hydrolysate is sort of special because it doesn't have to be broken apart. It can be absorbed directly from your gut, and then used wherever needed, bypassing the slow speed of normal digestion. Any ailment that is the result of too little collagen (wrinkles, arthritis, some heart diseases, etc.) can be *effected* by ingesting collagen supplements. Results vary, and that's what research is still looking at. | 2 |
j5xz8m | Biology | Mules have been around since way before artificial insemination. How do the horse (generally female) and donkey (generally male) mate with such a significant height difference? | Good *physical* answers here. Having owned donkeys, I can also confirm that *motivation* is a pretty big factor, too -- a male donkey will attack "anything with a hole in it", or so it seems... | 4 |
czn10r | Other | why does everyone seem to hate vaping all of a sudden? | Evidence is beginning to be found that vaping is not nearly as harmless as once assumed. Also, as it becomes more popular, rather than just assuming people won't vape were it is not appreciated it is becoming more necessary to actually post/publish rules against vaping | 1 |
ly66ae | Technology | What is the crunchy sound you are hearing when a hard drive is reading and writing data? | Inside a hard drive specifically (hdd not ssd), is a little disc, beneath an arm kinda like a record player if you think about it. So when something says that it's writing, that information is being recorded on tiny moving parts (correct me if someone knows this is wrong, it's just how I was taught). This is what makes the scratchy noise. This is also why hdds are much more common to fault, as opposed to solid state drives (ssd) that have no moving parts | 2 |
8m54vx | Physics | If the Earth is spinning so fast, how do the stars stay so still to us? | They are really, really far away. When you ride in a car and look at a mountain out the window, it doesn't look like the mountain is moving, because it is far away from you. Same with Earth and the stars. | 2 |
6r63qp | Technology | Why do we have fancy unhackable standardized lotto machines but when it comes to voting we're still in the 1980s? | Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from the head of the IRS: "People ask me why the tax code is so complicated. My answer: because it's real money." | 10 |
bh5uwu | Mathematics | Why do Celsius and Fahrenheit temperatures “merge” at a cold enough temperature? | Any two lines that aren't parallel will cross at some point. Since the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales don't follow parallel lines, they will cross at some point and have a temperature where both are the same | 2 |
9hd193 | Biology | How do doctors predict or gauge how long more a person with terminal illness has to live? | They base it on statistics. They look at how long other people with similar conditions at a similar point of the disease lived. The range is probably around 1 standard deviation from the average. So, for example, if someone has fatal disease X then they look at how long other people if a similar age, and prior health status lived with that disease. And then based on that they are able to estimate some range. This is not a fool proof method since there are always outliers and those statistical anomalies but for the majority of people they will be within that range. | 2 |
koel1q | Earth Science | If the winter solstice is the longest night of the year, why does it mark the beginning of winter, rather than the very middle of it? | The temperature is changing downward the fastest on this day, since there is the least amount of sun. Until the amount of sun per day reaches the average amount of sun (basically at the spring equinox/the last day of winter), the daily temperature will tend to go down day after day. | 4 |
o75t98 | Chemistry | How do orange juice manufacturers get every batch to taste exactly the same? Oranges can vary substantially in flavor, sweetness, etc., and it's impossible to tell just by looking at it. How are they able to get the OJ to taste exactly the same with every batch when there are so many variables in the taste of an orange? | Basically, all the flavor is sucked out of the orange juice, and it's deoxygenated (to prevent spoilage) and stored in large tanks. Then when it comes time to bottle, they pour out a batch and add flavor packets derived from the original extraction. Every batch is consistent. This is also why orange juice from the same maker may taste different in different regions or countries. They tailor the flavor packets to the local tastes. | 5 |
735qpr | Biology | What is happening genetically when two unattractive parents gives birth to an attractive child? | There is not a gene for "good looking". There are many genes for many appearance features, but "good looking" is usually a proportional relationship between features. | 1 |
clfcvc | Engineering | How is concrete poured for roads with steep inclines? Wouldn’t it all just run down hill? | Concrete can be mixed to various consistencies, there isn't just one recipe. Concrete mixes have a variable called "slump": Imagine filling a traffic cone with wet concrete, then lifting the cone away to see how far that cone of wet concrete collapses under its own weight. Stiffer concrete falls less, or has a lower "slump", while runnier concrete collapses more and has greater "slump". Specific jobs work best if the concrete is mixed to a specific slump. For paving hillside roads, they just order a mix with slump that's low enough that the concrete won't wander off before it sets up. | 2 |
fsjwia | Other | Why is it possible for people to understand a language but not speak it | I remember watching a YouTube video a while ago where the woman outlined all the areas of the brain and what they do, there’s a part called the brocas(sp?) area that’s responsible for turning thoughts into words and physically speaking, it also connects and sends information into another part of the brain next to it called the wernick area which typically works to process auditory stimulation and translation as well as written language. Although there’s multiple parts of the brain that help people talk/understand each other, those are the two main ones. -things I’ve learnt after a mini stroke EDIT: here’s the link if anyone is interested and not grossed out by a naked human brain URL_0 | 23 |
a8t9ay | Economics | Why did Google and Microsoft got fined by the EU for embedding the play store in Android and Internet Explorer in Windows while Apple does both with the Apple store and Safari but doesn't get fined? | They both did more than just include an app with an operating system. Microsoft included IE, sure, but there were other parts tacked on to their antitrust lawsuit. They also already had a MASSIVE monopoly on the PC market, and were using that monopoly to further increase their browser and search shares. Google's wasn't just about the Play Store either. It was the combination if bundling their browser with the OS, bundling their search engine with the browser, and doing things like making it super hard for other manufacturers to run forked versions of Androids (they have some really crazy requirements/limitations for using their services). So with both them it wasn't just one thing that did it, but rather using a combination of factors to enforce their market dominance. Apple, at least, doesn't own a search engine. But they're probably being watched close. tl;dr - the lawsuits stemmed from the companies owning entire ecosystems, not just one little part (OS - > Browser - > Search and more, like apps). Apple doesn't have quite the same system. Apple also has a much lower marketshare in the EU, so there's no monopoly of any sort from their view. | 5 |
6pyvjv | Technology | What is the purpose of spam email that entices a reply with no personal information? For example, I have a spam email that just says, "if you don't want to talk to me, just say it." In what way are spam senders benefitting? | By replying, you're giving the spammers three pieces of valuable information. First, you're verifying that the email address they sent is a valid email address that is being checked. That has value to other spammers, making your email something they can sell. Second, you're verifying that their email message wasn't screened out by whatever anti-spam filters are in place. That shows the skill of the spammer's ability, making their services appear more valuable. Finally, by replying you're verifying that you have the psychology that reads these junk emails, and will from time-to-time, respond to unsolicited messages, which makes you an appealing target for future efforts. | 3 |
6i4usj | Engineering | how do window air conditioners (units that are not central but not mobile) keep on giving cold goodness without any kind of refill or coolant? Will it ever run out of coolness? | Already some great answers here, but I'd like to add that you don't need to refill it with coolant, but you do need to "refill" it with electricity. Constantly. In order to pull heat out of one space and push it into another space, an AC/refrigerator needs tons of power. Usually it gets this power from electricity that comes from an outlet in the wall. In the case of a vehicle, it gets power from an engine. In the case of an RV, maybe it gets the power from a propane tank or something. Coolant is not the fuel. But there is still a fuel requirement. | 10 |
977sxk | Economics | Why do credit cards have a verification code? Why not just make them 3-4 figures longer and treat the last few digits as a verification code with the rest of the card number? | If someone managed to get your entire CC number, they'd be able to make all kinds of online purchases. With the current system, even if they knew your CC number, they wouldn't be able to make purchases without the CVV as well. It's like a very light form of 2 step verification. Also online vendors cannot save any data about the CVV, so it prevents like an employee of Amazon from looking at your card info and making fraudulent purchases. | 7 |
9jetck | Other | If someone built a spaceship and simply flew to the moon, what kind of trouble would that person get into? | Others have noted that, barring airspace permission for where you launch from, it's basically legal. But there's another aspect on the more practical side... there's no such thing as a _single stage_ moon rocket. You'll be dropping stages during launch and leaving debris in orbit that could cause damage on the ground or to existing satellites, and _that_ could get you some very expensive lawsuits when (if?) you return to Earth jurisdiction... | 9 |
bcvggg | Biology | If too much salt is considered bad for you, how do people in countries like Japan and other Asian countries stay so healthy when their food is so high in sodium? | too much salt is not bad for you because too much salt is impossible unless you have heart or kidney problems (or you have no access to fresh water). Otherwise if you eat a lot of salt your body triggers a thirst response, you drink water, the salt gets absorbed into the water which goes into your bladder and you pee it out until you reach equilibrium. URL_0 money quote: **This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure.** | 21 |