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mmz2ei | Earth Science | Why do lakes not just seep into the earth? To explain further, what stops lakes from simply seeping into the dirt, and thus vanishing? As a follow up question, what stops water from getting evaporated, and then the clouds move somewhere else and rain, thus depriving the lake of the water it lost? | I think the misunderstanding you have is that you believe water just seeps into the ground and disappears forever. That's not correct. When water lands on your lawn, for example, it may seep into the soil, but it's not going very far. Most of that water will be making it's way underground to the nearest ditch, steam, river. The water doesn't (much) go into the bedrock. And anywhere that it does, it will reach an aquifer which is already full of water from the millions of years of this happening. Also after a very short amount of rain, the soil is full, and will absorb no more water. After that, the water is going to start 'flooding' by an inch or so and flowing overland to the nearest stream. As for evaporatolion, it does evaporate, but slowly, and lakes are fed by streams and rivers. They in turn feed bigger rivers. A huge amount of the rain that lands in the USA east of the rockies eventually winds up in the Mississippi River this way, via various streams and lakes along the way. Lately, in any place where a lake's evaporation or draining is faster than it's inputs, there isn't a lake anymore. They dry up. So if you see a lake, that means that it's currently in or very close to it's equilibrium, where inputs = outputs. | 10 |
gs5a57 | Biology | how a person dies from blood loss. How do they not come back after given more blood like they do when given CPR or AED? | Blood carries oxygen to your organs and takes waste out. Prolonged loss of blood prevents your organs receiving necessary oxygen and after a certain point cells start to die. This will cause organs to fail and eventually the tissue to die permanently. When these organs are vital, I.e. The brain, then life cannot be sustained. CPR is different as the action forces blood to be pumped around the body when the heart isn't working properly. It's worth noting that if you require CPR your odds of survival are generally still very low, despite what Hollywood shows in movies | 3 |
jgdssy | Economics | As a millennial I've been told that my generation will hardly get anything from social security. Is there stats on this? | The biggest problem, that I haven't seen mentioned here, is that the government saw that social security had TONS of money just sitting there doing nothing (besides paying for retirement) and decided to make loans against it. And now there is no oversight on when those branches of government pay back the loan on social security. And some branches keep borrowing so the funds are being withdrawn by retirement seeking people and greedy people and by branches of government that aren't self sustaining. | 4 |
96ft3k | Chemistry | why does corn pop and expand into yummy cinema treats? | The hard kernel provides resistance, allowing pressure to build then pop. The pressure is caused by the moisture content creating steam. The resulting airy foam is the starchy inside of the kernal, which is very briefly exploded then solidifies into an airy mass. Other grains will puff (see: puffed wheat cereal) but corn's harder outer shell allows for more pressure and a larger release of energy giving a large fluffy popped corn. | 2 |
61xm1k | Culture | Why aren't telephone scams stopped? I receive the same telephone scams over and over, people using automated tough guy sounding voices pretending to ask for charity for the police, people with Indian accents and American names who say they are working for microsoft calling about my computer, and I'm reading now that people are getting fake IRS scam calls. How come these people aren't being caught and do we have any potentially effective means of stopping them? | You ever played whack-a-mole at the arcade? Same thing. They are constantly moving/changing targets. They use spoofed/fake numbers, and like others have said, it's not feasible to try to prosecute someone in Nigeria for breaking a minor US law. | 8 |
o0sudt | Other | How does hypnotherapy actually work (does it actually work at all?) I’m assuming here what we see on TV - someone going under and remembering a traumatic repressed memory with vivid clarity - is oversimplified, if not completely inaccurate, but I’m a dummy about this so I’m just wildly guessing. Does anything specific actually happen in your brain or is it just one of those things that has varying results for different people/is dependent on suggestibility (not that there’s anything wrong with that, I feel like I’m probably highly suggestible as a person)? | The goal of hypnosis is to enter a relaxed mental state. The veracity of the practice is up for debate, and results largely depend on the willingness of the subject. In a sense it's like a placebo effect; willingness is integral to success. Does a subject's brain activity change under hypnosis? Sure; it also changes when angry, sleepy, etc. So-called "real" hypnosis is very much akin to guided meditation, which also seeks to quiet the conscious mind so the subconscious takes center stage. Like the other guy said, the accuracy of recovered memories is suspect, but that's true for any memory. Same reason eyewitness testimony is so often wrong. A burgundy sedan becomes a red coup, a goatee becomes a full beard, etc. | 2 |
kn7die | Earth Science | how we know that every snow flake is unique? With all e snow flakes that have ever fallen, could there have been two that were identical? | Yes, theoretically it’s just almost impossible to confirm due to the fact they have such a short life span as an individual. There is also no financial or scientific reason to prove or disprove this. | 2 |
830nlx | Economics | when people say "in today's dollars", how are they calculating it? | The most common way of measuring inflation is by calculating the cost of a collection of goods and average person would purchase regularly. This is known by the name "consumer price index". If we assume the items have remained largely the same (eg a gallon of milk then is a gallon of milk today.), The relative purchasing power of a currency can be calculated | 1 |
7q6d25 | Biology | How has the Panama Canal effected fish and wild life in the Atlantic and Pacific that previously had no interaction? | Well, the lock fees are high enough that most fish choose to swim around rather than take the tollway. Sorry, couldn’t help myself. But the freshwater issue is what I’ve always understood to be the impediment when I asked the same question years ago to some engineer friends. | 7 |
jqaai2 | Engineering | What exactly is game engine and why do games show what engine they are using? | Game engines are basically just code libraries that deal with the complex aspects of games, most commonly used for 3-D games. The mathematics and code to manage and process 3D games is VERY complex, especially when it comes to the rendering of such games. So developers adopt the old "why re-invent the wheel" method, and just use an existing engine someone has made and tested before. As for why developers advertise, I can only speculate, but it is likely because the engine you choose directly has an impact on the physics and visuals of a game (reflections, lighting engine, ect). It's why (among other economic reasons) triple A games tend not to use Unity. Does this make sense? | 1 |
65nyid | Culture | Why was the historical development of beer more important than that of other alcoholic beverages? | Because it goes hand in hand with the rise of agriculture! Beer and bread were invented simultaneously in ancient Sumeria. as they involve the same basic ingredients - ground wheat and yeast. Yeast would have been airborne to start with, and both processes would likely have involved soaking the kernels to soften them. You could make bread from the solid bits, and the liquid bits would have been beer. It's an ancient drink. In the Americas, the Wari went through a similar process with corn. Agriculture spread quickly across ancient Peru, because the Wari realized that by growing slightly more corn than you needed to live, you could brew it into a fantastic party drink. Their empire spread based on this teaching, they built huge stone terraces and had dance festivals, and worshiped gods of drink. The drinking cup was sacred. It was basically corn beer, and is still popular to this day. | 16 |
eb4mut | Physics | what is a half-life? | It's a tool we use to describe an exponential loss of something. For linear loss, you can just use the time it takes to reach zero because the rate of loss never changes, for example your phone's battery life is X hours. For exponential loss, the rate of loss actually slows down and approaches zero as the amount of whatever you're measuring approaches zero. For example, most medicine is metabolised by your body faster at higher concentrations. In this instance, it's not really useful to talk about how long Advil will remain in your body, because trace amounts can remain for days or weeks, so we go by half-lives instead. Aspirin has a half-life of about 3 hours. So after taking a 200mg dose, the amount left in your system after 3 hours is 100mg. 6 hours after taking it, it would be 50mg. 25mg at 9 hours, 12.5mg after 12 hours, 6.25mg after 15 hours, 3.125mg after 18 hours, etc, etc. Edit: also it's a common mistake people make to assume amount left is zero after two half-lives ("well if after 3 hours you lost 100mg, so you should lose another 100 after another 3" is a natural assumption to make). Don't fall into this trap. It's actually a quarter of the original. | 4 |
5ssjtw | Culture | Democracy vs. Republic I've heard many people say "America isn't a democracy it's a republic" but what exactly is the difference between these two? And how did the perception that we live in a democracy begin? | The most accurate term would be "democratic republic", though there is wiggle room with all the terms. A democracy, strictly speaking, involves all legal voters at every level. That is simply not manageable in anything larger than a small town (or perhaps a mid-size city), however. A republic involves representatives sent from the various areas within the governed area. Republics generally have the representatives voting based on their own ideas and interests, sometimes with input from those in the areas they represent. For the first several decades of the US as a nation, Senators were nominated (appointed) by the state government for the state they came from, though today they are elected directly by the residents of each state. House members have always been elected directly. In the middle ages in Europe those with money or land or other large holdings/resources or who were minor royalty in some way could appoint people to represent their interests to the king (or queen). This varied a bit from age to age, but was generally present in some form or another. This is an example of a republic where the average person had no real say in the day to day matters, but where the central authority (the monarch) had some limits or influence applied from below rather than ruling at their whimsy and with no accountability or pay-outs or whathaveyou to anyone. *Edit: example--a duke or lord might have used their knights and/or wealth to influence a king's decision. "You want to do battle with this other rival king/nation, and need my knights to help you? Ok, let's talk about that highway I proposed last year to connect my fiefdom with that of duke A and lord B on either side of me...for trade purposes. And that university you want to build...I have some land I could "donate" to the cause...", etc.* The US is a little bit of both. We send representatives to every level of governance from school boards to township and county boards and city council all the way up to state and national government. These people compete for votes with their ideas and visions, so while we don't often agree with everything any single individual does or pursues--we do have some element of choice. We can choose the person or persons who come closest to embodying our interests, and in turn we expect that person to pursue those things on our behalf in regards to governance. When their term is up, we can replace them (or try to anyway) or retain them (or try to). In this sense voters have a democratic input over the course of time but not in the day to day. If we don't like what someone has been pursuing, we have the option to replace them or (in some cases) recall them prematurely. But we do not have a direct say in day to day or bill-to-bill matters except as we might do through protests, letter campaigns, and other organizational efforts that may influence the way a representative handles a given situation. As an example, here is a news clip from just a few days ago about [public lands bill HR 621]( URL_0 ), a House bill that would have disposed of a significant amount of public lands in the western US. An overwhelmingly furious response from a very wide array of people across many states persuaded the original sponsor of the bill to not only yank the bill, but to do so with a nod to public influence on their social media page. Click the link (above) for a screen-cap of their response to the pushback. Here is an article [outlining successes in public resistance to Trump's actions so far]( URL_1 ). The Tea Party has a well documented history of outsized influence on politics over the past six or eight years, succeeding tremendously despite "true" adherents being in a minority even within the Republican Party. And so on. | 9 |
791mnz | Economics | Who decides how much the president earns? | Assuming you mean the US President, the Constitution includes this provision in Article 2: > The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them. The exact form of the presidential Compensation is set by Congress by law. Presently [US Code Title 3 Chapter 2 § 102]( URL_0 ) sets it at a $400 000 yearly salary to be paid in monthly installments, and a $50 000 expense account for private expenses while carrying out the duties of the office. | 1 |
76893b | Chemistry | California couple survived wildfire by staying in a pool for 6hrs... How is that possible? | Heat rises. Because the pool was underground, it wasn't heated as quickly. Heating water is actually the hardest part of cooking, because it's not an easy substance to heat compared to others. The malliard reaction that causes browning, for example, has trouble happening if meat is too wet. Which is why they advise folks to pad stuff dry before searing it. It allows the sear to happen faster, because it doesn't have to heat up the water on the surface of the food, just the food. If it was an above-ground pool, there would be more surface area exposed to the fire, and they might have cooked to death. The same thing happens with bathtubs, both because heat comes from the sides, and because a smaller amount of water is easier to heat. | 2 |
ht83bq | Biology | what are those little bumps/fin things under the corner of your lips that you can't help but bite into? | They are called keloids - and are a form of raised scar tissue from when you bite your lips/cheeks. URL_0 | 2 |
5u8vpk | Biology | Why is it that some people can learn equations and concepts when examples are involved ie: physics/chemistry but struggle with similar ideas when examples aren't involved ie: trig/calc/algebra? | There have been many theories of learning which categorise people into different groups depending how they learn. Pretty much all of these theories have been disproven. However, one thing that *is* known is that, however hard it is to categorise people, we *do* all learn differently! Some people like to see things written down, others like pictures or prefer to listen to the material they're supposed to learn. Some people can learn abstract things more easily, others can learn better by seeing and understanding examples. **BUT** - a good teacher knows this, and uses a variety of different techniques during a lesson, to ensure that learners of all types are able to learn the material. Trigonometry, calculus and algebra are all subjects that can, and should, be taught using examples (although, like all subjects, they shouldn't be taught *only* with examples). If you've been taught these subjects without seeing a single example of a real-life problem where they would be used then unfortunately you have probably suffered from less-than-perfect teaching. | 1 |
6ttsqj | Biology | What performance difference can we see between an athlete that warms up and one that doesnt before a race? I would like to know specifically about cyclists | Interestingly enough there might not be much of a difference. There was a study done with runners that showed that people who did warm up and stretch before running had the same rate of injuries as those who didn't. | 4 |
bt7ut0 | Technology | Why do most video games only run on Windows and not Mac OS? | Because almost 90% of all computers use Windows. Most developers don't want to bother making games that less than 10% of computers can run. [Desktop OS Market Share]( URL_0 ) | 3 |
ai8f8j | Economics | The broken window fallacy | There's an idea that spending money/creating jobs is good for the economy no matter what. The broken window example shows us that this idea doesn't stand up if you use a little common sense, that if you believe that spending money is helpful then there are some ways to do that that are better | 22 |
bn0zic | Biology | How do our brains distinguish loud, far away sounds, from quiet, near sounds, even if the sound output in decibels is the same? I think I worded that really badly. An example would be, if you’re in your house and hear a car alarm going off out in the street, it measures X decibels where you’re standing. If you then heard your phone alarm going off, and this also measured X decibels, how does your brain know one is coming from far away and the other is near? | It's to do with the way sound travels through the air, as well as some other factors in different environments. As sound travels through the air, higher frequencies get quieter. A loud noise far away has less high frequencies than a quiet sound close by, because it travels through more air. Reverberation ratio also has an effect. The further away the sound source is, the more likely it hit a wall, or several, on its way to you, therefore the reverberation will be louder in comparison to the main sound [Wikipedia article]( URL_0 ) | 2 |
8i337b | Technology | Why is the sound / EQ levels on some videos so low, when volume is maxed on the device? On my laptop, many videos are nearly impossible to hear without an external speaker. However, i know the sound can get much louder, because some music or videos are significantly louder. Sometimes, the video is maxed, my laptop is maxed, but the eq is still barely registering, and the levels are like 5% of max. So why cant i just keep turning up the volume until the EQ is at max? What is telling my computer that this is as loud as it gets, when its clearly capable of getting louder? | Imagine the volume slider as a "multiplier" on the original sound source. In a gross oversimplification, let's assume that the slider is a direct multiplier on the sound level, so that max setting is 100% sound--the exact sound level of the original--50% is half the sound of the original, and a zero setting is obviously 0% (no sound). In this scenario, you'll notice that the volume control depends greatly on the sound level in the original audio. If you're playing audio file 1 with sound level 80, and an audio file 2 with sound level 40, file 2 will always be half as loud as file 1, no matter what your sound setting, because the original sound level in each file is just being multiplied by an amount set by the volume slider. (technically, sound levels scale logarithmically, but let's ignore that for now). So now that we've established how the volume slider works, the main part of the question is, *why* is it like that? Clearly, the physical speakers on the laptop are capable of creating larger sounds. However, whenever you play sounds louder than their original value (amplification), you run the risk of distorting them. Have you ever heard a video or sound file which sounded kind of "boomy" or "fuzzy"? That's typically the result of overwhelming amplification. Since this is generally viewed as undesirable, the computer generally doesn't let you do this, and limits you to playing sound files no louder than the original volume. Depending on your specific computer model and driver software, it might be possible--some systems have max slider at something greater than 100%, but this results in reduced sound quality. | 1 |
7kwaqg | Chemistry | If smells are tiny bits of matter, how is it that static electricity, being energy, has a scent? | You're smelling ozone. In the presence of an electrical discharge (more noticeable after a lightning strike) O-3 forms, which is what you're smelling. | 1 |
8fhg2p | Other | Why can you see fast moving LED's but not the LED holder? URL_0 In this video, before this thing spins up fast, you can see it. So it's not transparent. But why does it appear to be "transparent", when it becomes fast moving? Why can you see the LED's which move equally as fast, but not the thing holding it? They are both the same speed. Shouldn't you see a black background everywhere the LED's don't light up? Is this actually dependant on the speed of light? Is it an optical illusion because our eyes are not sensitive enough? Is this related to black white moving wheels? | The spinning object is mostly empty space — it's only blocking the view behind it for about 1/5 of the time. So it doesn't black it out — just makes the view behind a little dimmer. | 2 |
f6vo7h | Biology | Why do colds/flu/bugs seem to end with an annoying cough that lasts for ages? | When you're ill, your body makes mucus to clear the cell lining of bacteria and viruses. Once it does its job and that harmful bacteria/virus is gone, your body no longer needs the excess mucus. Coughing is the most efficient way of getting it out. | 9 |
8b7hoj | Biology | why does the meat of different animals vary so much in color, texture, and flavor? Is their muscle composition really that different? | Pretty much. How an animals muscles are connected to the skeleton and/shell, and the connective tissue impacts texture. Slow twitch vs fast twitch muscles and the ratio between the two also changes the flavor and texture | 3 |
j1k5vj | Technology | How can something so small ( considering the effect ) like a nuclear bomb make so much damage ? | Because there is a lot and i mean a lot of energy stored in the bonds between particles inside an atom | 3 |
8nxgdj | Biology | Why do caterpillars poke holes in leaves then leave? Was looking at some tree leaves when i noticed that caterpillars would nibble a small tunnel through a leaf, then crawl over to a fresh new leaf and do it again. Wouldnt it be much easier if the caterpillar just stayed at the same leaf and continue munching away at it? | Plants are generally not as passive as we think they are. Many species have self-defense mechanisms in place, such as toxins or other chemicals that are foul to the insect. When damaged, the plant will condense these chemicals in the damaged area to prevent further damage and increase sugar flow to repair the damage. I suspect the caterpillar's behavior is because of this, they move to a new leaf because it starts to taste awful. 😋 | 3 |
8qrjmh | Other | Why scientists can date the age of Earth, but not the Egyptian pyramids or the Sphinx? I read that really old objects can sometimes not be carbon dated, because there isn't any C14 left in the object. Then how come we can decide the age of Earth, which is significantly older? | Carbon dating works by using a specific isotope which only accounts for about one trillionth of the carbon in a living organism, and is reduced by half every 6000 years or so. Dating the Earth works by using Uranium 238, which makes up over 2% of certain rocks and is reduced by half every 4.5 billion years (which happens to be about as long as the Sun has been around for). | 3 |
cmx1ht | Other | What causes an illusion of perceived latency in dimmed writing? I have just noticed that if in a pitch black room, with your phones brightness turned down all the way down, very very dim words on a black background have a latency thing going on. When I move my phone, it seems to lag behind a bright word used for refrence. Everyone in my wider family sees it too so it can't be specific to my case. I can see that sounded very vague and dull in this post, but assure you I am an individual with above average intelligence. Not that this helps you in any way, it helps my ego a lot tho. lol what im trying to say is to not be too simple in the explanation | The cells in your retina have a harder time detecting the tiny amount of light coming, especially if you're looking right at it. The cells toward the side of your field-of-view are more sensitive to dim light. | 1 |
e6d5rj | Mathematics | does one proof of a mathematical statement imply infinitely many proofs of that statement? | Well what constitutes a different proof? Certainly I could take any proof and change some of the wording around but it would still be essentially the same argument. How much has to change before the proof is considered different? | 2 |
lhkj7y | Biology | How do masks work if germs are smaller than the fabric? | Many germs and viruses can only travel through the air on water droplets. The fabric of your mask catches those water droplets as you breath/sneeze/cough, preventing them from spreading as far as they would without a mask. You can easily test this yourself if it's cold where you are just by going outside and breathing normally with and without a mask. Without a mask, you'll see your breath travel quite a few feet. With a mask, you'll barely see your breath at all. | 9 |
da39d6 | Engineering | Why are cars that are yet to be released painted in that weird black and white pattern? | When rival companies or paparazzi try to take pictures of the car, the colors make it harder to tell details about the shape of the car, because it tricks the camera's zoom so it can't focus. Car companies don't want their cars revealed until they officially announce them, but they want to test them. | 3 |
5uas0x | Engineering | How do people with houses next to eachother get power from two different companies? (even though they both use the same power line) | You don't get power from a specific company. They provide capacity to the network and you pay for that. You get exactly the same power as everyone else. | 2 |
9lknsl | Other | How sports are able to keep such high viewership without any change while esports games need to change constantly to stay relevant? | Because video games are not a real sport and thus don't garner the same level of respect that real sports and real athletes enjoy. The NFL doesn't need to change up the game fundentally because a RB taking a handoff, juking two or three players, and the trucking the safety and then cruising in for a 50 yard TD run will always be exciting and fun to watch. It's cool that professional level video game players exist, but conflating them with real athletes and then expecting similar levels of viewership/respect is a flawed approach. | 37 |
kv8wm5 | Physics | is stone just colder than other materials or does it just feel like that? | It just feels that way. You are hotter then comfortable room temperature. This is because you are producing heat. When you put your bare skin on something insulating such as carpet you will quickly heat up the top layer of the carpet and it becomes almost body temperature. However stone and metals are able to quickly conduct any heat into the rest of it. So when you put your bare skin on it you will not be able to heat it up as quickly. It will still be cold until your body temperature is able to heat it up in its entirety. | 6 |
hn5jr9 | Technology | If a phone can have the shutter speed set to 1/4000 of a second, why can't it record video at higher than 240fps? | So these answers are partially right and partially wrong. The time it takes to read the data is a few microseconds, which is much much faster than the exposure time anyway, but it has to do with how the camera sensor works. As far as I know all smart phone cameras besides the iPhone IR camera use what's called a rolling shutter. It's an electronic shutter of course and is really a CMOS sensor that can be turned on and off to capture light at pixels very fast. It's possible to have a global shutter that works similarly to a physical shutter by turning all pixels on to capture light at the same time and then reading them all at once, but you start to get problems with noise and therefore image quality and it gets exponentially more expensive to avoid that with more pixels and faster speeds. So rolling sensors instead expose each line of pixels individually, staggering them so that there is time to read each line one at a time. AKA lets say it takes 5 microseconds to read one line of pixels; in your example it exposes each pixel for 1/4000 of a second, or 250 microseconds. It will start exposing the first line, then the second 5 microseconds later, and so on. A modern camera might have upwards of 5000 lines of pixels. Even at just 5 microseconds per line, that means the last line of pixels actually takes a picture 25 milliseconds after the first, and is why taking a picture of spinning fan blades and other fast moving stuff looks weird on a phone camera. For video it makes each image one at a time so it has to wait until all of the pixels are captured and create an image for each frame. In the above example you expose pixels to light for 1/4000 of a second but it actually takes 1/400 of a second to capture the whole image/frame, plus a bit of time to "put together" and store the image. | 2 |
8alsbi | Repost | Why does hearing your own voice through a recording sound so much different than how you hear/perceive your voice when speaking in general? | Am I weird for liking my recorded voice? | 24 |
aht4qa | Other | if you were addicted to drugs/alcohol and then put into a coma for a long time; would you still have a dependency on them mentally after you woke up? | You will *absolutely* still have a psychological dependence when you wake up. It is pretty common for people who undergo sedated detox to go right back to using in short order if they do not immediately attempt behavioral therapy. | 2 |
gtaymf | Physics | Theoretically if I was 100 million light years away from earth would I be able to watch the dinosaurs if I had a telescope strong enough if so elaborate? | imagine light as little laser beams. those beams travel at "the speed of light" so at a 100 million light years distance, you would be able to "see" the light reflected from earth a 100 milion years ago. so in theory, if you had a telescope which was big and strong enough to focus that light, you could see the dinosaurs. | 5 |
l3205d | Technology | Is theoretically any device connected to the internet vulnerable to attacks from hackers? | Security researcher here: Theoretically? No. Practically, absolutely. If there's a device out there connected to the internet, it likely has some services running on it, and due to the complexity of software development/networking/much more, no one person knows everything a device is doing. This is where criminal hackers come into play, by applying common research techniques as well as reverse engineering skills, they are able to develop exploits that take advantage of flaws in software and services. The general rule in security is that "everything can be hacked"\*, but the defensive idea is to make it so time consuming and not worthwhile for criminals to try and attack. No one wants to spend 2k hours trying to make your smart fridge warm(Well, at least most criminal hackers, I'd like to imagine(though I'm sure there's a few out there!)). | 5 |
8hkuly | Biology | How do we not kill off bees by harvesting their honey? Don’t they need the honey to survive the winter? | They need about 80% of their honey to survive the winter. So we only harvest a fraction. You're correct that if you take it *all* you risk killing the hive. | 5 |
5ojogp | Repost | when attempting to sneeze, why does looking at the sun/a light source trigger it? | No one really knows. Some scientists say it's caused by confusion in the nervous system. Since all senses are linked, the pupil dilation response to light is translated to a nasal irritation and causes a sneeze. Other scientists suggest it's evolutionary, a trait that helped our ancestors survive in primitive life. (Clear the nose of smoke/other smells after leaving a cave to help smell threats/food sources). | 9 |
haozlp | Technology | What are the two small glass pieces next to US presidents while giving speeches supposed to do? Are they some sort of protection? how does such a tiny piece of glass protect a person? | Like this: I chose the last 3 presidents of the usa as this should not end in a discussion about politics, so just click on a random image or your favourite :D [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) trump [ URL_3 ]( URL_3 ) obama [ URL_2 ]( URL_1 ) bush | 4 |
a8xncy | Biology | Why does singing calm babies, and at what point does singing stop having a calming effect on kids? It's well known that singing calms a crying baby down. I didn't realize exactly HOW effective it was until I had my own daughter, now five months old. She can be having a complete meltdown, but almost a second after I start singing she just stops and either goes to sleep or starts smiling and cooing. I can rock her, talk sweetly, etc. But, none of that works as quickly or at all like singing does. My question is, why is it so effective? And, at what point does this stop helping a person calm down? It has to stop at some point or we would all be calling our Mommies to sing to us when we're upset. | My 2 year old son won't lie still whilst I change his nappies, so I sing the Beatles to him, it calms him down and he smiles at me. | 3 |
k8wqot | Earth Science | How much clean, drinkable water is left on Earth and what is being done to combat an eventual shortage? | There is 1.386 billion km³ (333 million cubic miles), of water on Earth. The issues of drinking water are mostly about cost. People expect water to be almost free, on average it costs $0.004 per gallon. It that price, supplies are scarce. At higher prices, there is plenty. | 3 |
6hczhi | Biology | Why are our brains attracted to art? Why do our brains find an attraction to various art forms (music, visual art, food art, etc.)? And is there anything that creates a specific 'taste' in what different people like (ex. a certain genre of music)? | It's really the other way round: art is things that are specifically designed to engage our brain in some way. If they don't, the artist failed. | 1 |
a6jpsp | Economics | If banks currently make transactions digitally, what prevents hackers from creating counterfeit digital currency? In other words how are banks kept accountable for the amount of money they actually have? | Banks *owe* the amount of money that's in each account — the depositors are free to withdraw it. So they have every incentive to prevent someone fraudulently raising the balance. In addition to normal computer security they use *audit trails* — complete records of every deposit and where it came from — so that you can't just raise a balance without having a deposit. | 3 |
cdzclv | Other | How can an insurance company deny a surgery/medication/etc? | The healthcare contract doesn't say "cover all medical expenses". Some used to say things closer to that, but ObamaCare eliminated these "Cadillac Policies" as unfair and an obstacle to having minimal healthcare for all. You need to read the fine print. One piece of fine print that varies quite a bit is the prescription formulary. This is the complete list of drugs that will be covered. Every company has one, and they don't cover any drug not on the list. | 2 |
6fuqez | Biology | How come Humans have so many mental conditions and illnesses, yet no other species really has them? Just wondering and it's starting to bother me lol Edit: why all the downvotes :( | Other species absolutely do have the same scope of medical problems that humans have. The issue is that they go entirely untreated; a bipolar squirrel is just a weird squirrel. A crow with a learning disability ends up as roadkill. Humans have so many recognized health conditions because humans are really concerned with keeping humans alive and healthy. Not so much for wild animals. | 5 |
ldzj17 | Other | In 8D audio, how is the audio able to sound like it's behind or in front of you even though there are only left or right outputs? | There are many technically detailed answers here but almost none answer the question exactly, probably because they don't know what 8D audio really is. 8D audio is not an official standard or anything, just a clickbaity term many YouTube channels have adopted. It's nothing more than slowly panning different instruments from left to right audio channels and vice versa. But you are right. You can't actually tell if a sound is in front of you or behind you with just a stereo channel. Even with 8D audio. What happens is you subconciously "decide" whether the initial sound is in front or behind you, and then go from there. If you focus enough you may be able to change the direction of the music from clockwise to counter clockwise or vice versa (in the same way you can change the direction of that spinning ballerina gif illusion if you think hard enough, if you've seen it - it is the same concept, with a 3D animated object being displayed on a 2D plane, but using image instead of audio). | 11 |
6mlizm | Technology | how font designers can design for Japanese and Chinese, languages that both use millions of individual Chinese characters? edit: I guess I had overestimated how many characters these languages use -- as many pointed out, it's only tens of thousands, at the most. Thanks for the great responses, though! | It's a lot of work. In fact, Japanese and Chinese font files (ex ttf) are about 30 to 40 MB. Compare with an English font file which is about 0.5 MB. | 24 |
bakqxd | Biology | why is women life expectancy longer than men's? | Many reasons. 1 - Men tend to take bigger risks, including doing things that are potentially lethal. 2 - Men tend to work more dangerous jobs such as firefighting, construction, and military service. 3 - Men are more likely to develop heart related issues, which may have a biological component but also is impacted by lifestyle. 4 - Men are typically larger than women which has a negative impact on lifespan though this isn't 100% clear in humans. 5 - Men are more likely to commit (well really succeed) at suicide. 6 - Men tend to be less socially connected which has been found to increase the probability of death. 7 - Men tend to avoid doctors. So all in all, it's a lot of different factors. | 1 |
dlg2nw | Other | Why was it better for swords to only have ONE edged blade (like the Katana or Falchion)? Just wandering if it was better at all, or if there are disadvantages to having both blades edged. | One more funny reason, that has less to do with functionality but more with economics and what we would today think of as a "patent loophole" or so. In the late middle ages, guilds were well established and regulated in what they could do. For example, a swordsmith could make just swords and a knifemaker just knifes. But there's a lot of money in selling weapons for self defense and the knifemaker would really like to get in on that, but he isn't allowed to build swords since that would infringe on guild law, even though he could with his skill. However, a sword is primarily defined to be constructed in one way (tang (grip end of blade) through crossguard, grip into pommel, probaply double edged during that time) and a knife in a different way (single edged, grip is riveted onto tang from both sides, you can still see that on modern knifes), so the knifemaker just makes a big knife and sells it as exactly that, a "grosses messer" (german literally for big knife) and even though it is clearly a weapon he is technically doing nothing illegal. Messer were quite popular with middle-class people and farmers, since they tended to be plain and thus affordable, while beeing very capable as a self defense weapons, since a thug or thief was most likely unarmored and as others have stated, single edged, curved weapons are better for that. Keep in mind that this origin story is not 100% certain but it is considdered the most likely one. | 4 |
k4y7lh | Mathematics | If I see my reflection from 25 feet away, am I seeing how big I am from 25 or 50 feet away since the image has to travel the gap twice? | At the risk of stating the obvious, how big you are doesn't change with distance. Things further away appear to be smaller because they take up less of our field of view, and you've hit the nail on the head - the light is travelling twice as far. This is why the illusion that objects in a mirror can appear as though they are through a window (and vice versa) works - became as far as the light is concerned, they're the same thing. An utterly incredible example of this effect can be seen here: URL_0 .. So the answer is 50ft. | 3 |
ghlior | Other | Why do so many American boys get circumsized? | Back in the days, some Christian integrists, like Graham (of the Graham cookies) and Kellogg (of the corn flakes) were trying to suppress the "bad" urges in the youth. Hence why they created bland nourishing foods, so you would be sustained but not with anything exciting. They came to the conclusion that if you're circumcised, it will be less pleasurable and more inconvenient to masturbate. Because of that they pushed that agenda that circumcision would lead to a cleaner life. The general public followed the pressure groups they enlisted in their crusade against masturbation and "corruption of the youth" and that's how the US is the only country to mass circumcise for non religious reasons. | 1 |
80p9my | Technology | How does a BIOS update 'brick' hardware? | The BIOS (using the term a bit generically) is the first piece of code loaded when a system starts, and contains enough information to start the system and pass control to a piece of code on a storage device or other source. If for some reason, that code is messed up in some way, like an interrupted flashing, the system may be unable to boot as the instructions for booting may be missing/corrupted. Some enthusiast and server motherboards might have a redundant setup, or a backup method of loading a bios file, but for the majority of boards, a corrupted bios means a motherboard that is effectively dead to the consumer. | 6 |
n4jlb0 | Other | In Buddhism, how can one pursue enlightenment without being allowed to pursue things? | That's actually a very tricky question, and quite a lot of writing and thought in the Buddhist tradition has been devoted to exploring paradoxes of that kind. For one thing, it's a bit of an oversimplification to say you're 'not allowed' to pursue things in Buddhism. It's not quite so follow-the-rules as that; it's more like you're trying to cure yourself of the disease that makes you *want* to pursue things. If, in the course of curing that disease, you also happen to do some 'pursuing', it's not like everything is ruined. For another thing, the 'things' we're talking about pursuing, are usually thought of more as stuff related to the satisfaction of our ego's wants. Power, money, lifestyle, that kind of stuff. Enlightenment isn't really a 'thing' in the most simple reading. But not so fast! Like I alluded to, some Buddhist writers *have* asked the question: "What if, even in seeking enlightenment, we're actually seeking to satisfy our ego? What if we just want to see ourselves as an enlightened, 'good' person?" And from what I can tell, the most common answer is that this is inevitable sometimes - we're human and we will get caught up in our human patterns of thought - and that we simply try our best anyway. Edit: A teacher named Chögyam Trungpa wrote this: > Many people make the mistake of thinking that since ego is the root of suffering, the goal of spirituality must be to conquer and destroy ego. They struggle to eliminate ego’s heavy hand but that struggle is merely another expression of ego. We go around and around trying to improve ourselves through struggle, until we realize that ambition to improve ourselves is the problem. So the idea that enlightenment can become just another 'thing' we chase for the sake of ego grasping, is one that is taken very seriously. | 2 |
cyxxoj | Physics | What is the origin and meaning of "3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible"? | It was in the miniseries *Chernobyl*. It was said by a character who was obstinately refusing to consider the possibility that the disaster was worse than it was. 3.6 roentgen was the maximum that the sensor that they had available could read, which meant that the real value was likely to be higher. Spoiler: it was. I don't know if it's reported that the real person that the character was based on said something like that in reality or not. | 2 |
guztzj | Chemistry | Why does cement cools slower than metal? Our main windows faces west, so the hours of 1-5 pm it’s directly heated by the sun. Our windows have metal grills attached to the concrete wall. When it’s about 6pm, the metal grills are cooler than the wall. [edit] terms used | Metals generally have high heat conduction and low heat capacity. This means that energy travels in and out of them very easily but little energy is stored in them meaning they heat/cool quickly. Materials like cement have low heat conduction but higher heat capacity. This means they take more energy to heat up and once hot they take a long time to cool down. For some numbers the link below has a bunch of things but we can talk about steel and concrete. Steel has a heat capacity of ~500 while concrete is 1000. This means concrete stores twice as much heat (per mass) as steel. Looking at conductivity steel is 45 while concrete is just above 1. That means steel is going to easily accept or give up heat. URL_0 All the above numbers have units described in the link. | 2 |
ksunkd | Economics | Why does the Catholic Church own so many hospitals? | The hospital as a concept and and institution has its origins in church history; religious sisters from Europe have been nursing the poor / founding schools and hospitals in North America since the 1700s. [Here is a good summary; US info starts on p5]( URL_0 ) | 2 |
85dvgj | Biology | Why do one sometimes go to sleep full after a meal and wake up starving and sometimes go to sleep starving and wake up not hungry at all? | The feeling of hunger that you know is most likely just the initial signal. You body has digested the food and is like "hey, it would be cool to find some more food now". If you ignore it, the body assumes there's no opportunity to get food at the moment, so it shrugs, says "ok, fine, I've got some leftovers here", then starts using the resources that you've saved up. Now, the feeling that arrives when your resources *actually* start running out, is starvation. | 2 |
bcqtol | Engineering | Why do wind turbines only have a few, thin blades and not many to catch more air? I'm aware that more blades create more rotating mass which will eventually become a hindrance but why aren't fabric blades/sails used? Something like original windmills have. Surely this would catch much more air without adding significant weight. | You basically answered your own question. It's not as effective. Modern wind turbines don't work the way a sail works. The wind doesn't "push" the turbine. The "sails" are shaped and work like airplane wings. The wind blow "at" them and creates the same pressure difference. Additional note. Modern wind turbines have "brakes" built in because they are efficient enough that if you don't have the option of slowing them down, they will turn so fast, the force would cause them to fly apart. | 2 |
iwt20h | Other | Why is the term “assassination” mainly reserved for high-ranking people? Wouldn’t the term “murder” suffice just as well? | Assassination by definition is murder for political reasons. If you assassinate someone you murdered them, if you murdered them you might not have assassinated them. Square and rectangles type thing | 14 |
fy2413 | Chemistry | Why is a pinch of salt such an important part of so many recipes? | the point of salt isn’t for the food to taste like salt, rather for it to enhance and bring out flavours in the food that you’re adding it to! | 4 |
ep9y5d | Technology | why it’s hard to make an existing game for a different OS My favourite mobile game is currently only available for iOS and people have been asking why the android version is taking so long if the game already exists. Thanks for taking the time to help me with this! | really ELI5 but: & #x200B; The processor for iPhones uses one language, phones with Android use another. So like how if you typed something in English and showed it to a Russian, and vice versa, you guys would not understand each other? & #x200B; Same stuff with phones, if you took the code written for iOS and tried to just copy and paste it, it would not run on Android. & #x200B; Also take into consideration the fact that there are few iPhone models compared to the vast selection of Android phones available, all with varying levels of processing power, screen sizes, etc. So the developers of that app would have to figure out a way to make a really good "one size fits all" type app, or actually try to test run it on different phone models. & #x200B; Hope this helped and if I get downvoted to hell, oh well. | 3 |
lhp22u | Biology | How can you remember that you have forgotten something but can't remember the thing you have forgotten In the moment I say to myself "oh that's cool/important I must remember that for later" then when later comes I try to recall said thing but can only remember I've forgotten to remember something | It must have been stored in your short term memory as you really never paid attention to it. That is why some experiences are lost immediately when not processed into unconscious, as all short term memory is only stored in the conscious. | 1 |
nyduix | Biology | Why Do Doctors Hesitate To Increase Voltage While Applying Electroshock to the Heart? I guess I'm talking about defibrillation. Is it just the movies, or is it how defibrillation actually works in real life ? I mean, you are trying to revive someone, trying to bring them back to life. What's the worse thing that can happen ? Why do they start from low voltages and increase it slowly, and get more and more anxious and dramatic every time they say "Go up to 350" or whatever. I mean, the person is already dead. What's the risk ? Why do they act so hesitant ? What's there to lose ? | At what point does it stop becoming a life-saving effort and become a barbeque? The currents needed are miniscule in comparison to what we can actually muster | 4 |
hbu8b2 | Engineering | Why didn't Zeppelins/Blimps become popular means of transportation? Disclaimer: English is my second language For quite a while I've had the idea idea that if zeppelins where popular they would probably be like the cruise ships of the sky, you know, awesome sights, taking 1-2 weeks to arrive at your destination, and I'd think it would be awesome. Why didn't they get popular? I guess the Hindenburg accident might have been a big contributing factor to the loss of popularity, but hey, the Titanic sank and we still have cruise ships sailing the seas. Edit: Thanks a lot for your answers, I guess the real reasons are the cost and low speed | No idea, but if I had to take a wild guess at it, I'd say it's because we already invented the airplane, and blimps/Zeppelins were just too slow to be practical. Not to mention the not so good ratio of weight to lift and the fact that they weren't exactly agile in any sense of the word. | 8 |
ctbb2t | Economics | What is Home equity? How is it different from a home equity loan? | When most people buy a house they can’t buy it outright - they need a loan. So they will go to a lender and that lender buys the house for them, and then the person pays the lender back over a period of time - decades, usually. Effectively that gives the lender and the person stakes in the house. Home equity is what your stake in the house is. If you’ve just taken the mortgage out with a 10% down payment you have 10% equity, if you’ve then paid half the price of the house off you have 50%, so on. A home equity loan is a loan secured by your stake in the house - if you take the money out then don’t pay back, whoever you borrowed from gets your stake as recompense. You’ll be allowed to borrow theoretically up to how much of your house you own - if you have 50% in a $250k house they’ll let you borrow $125k because that’s all you own - but usually there’ll be a limit. My bank limits it to 80% of your equity, which in that case would be $100k. In that case effectively your mortgage lender owns half your home, the equity loan lender owns 80% of your half - so 40% - while you’re clear on 10%. | 1 |
auxw13 | Biology | What causes you to feel “full”? | Its a bit like a pressure plate in a sense. as well as level monitoring We have special receptors inside our stomach walls. As the stomach expands. It pushes these receptors that trigger a signal to the brain through the vagus nerve, this is the first sign that we are starting to get full. As the food breaks down into proteins sugars, carbs and fats, they reach the brain, receptors in the hypothalamus detect the increase of the “fuel” and trigger the sensation of not wanting to eat more. Then, as the stomach shrinks and hormone level and blood sugar levels start to drop, the hypothalamus triggers the “hungry” sensation | 1 |
fq91dc | Physics | How come we can see the sun for the first couple minutes after it rises without it being so bright? | Because of the Earths curvature (come at me flat-earthers), the sunlight goes through dozens of miles of atmosphere, being dispersed and reflected, when it's lower on the horizon vs when it's high up (only about 2 miles.) & #x200B; Edit: Graph giving a general idea of how this is works [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) | 1 |
jxmltg | Biology | What causes us to get bags/dark circles under our eyes when we are tired? | Digital camera sensors are more sensitive to UV light than film was, so photographs these days are more likely to show bags under your eyes than photographs in the film era did and even more than your eyes see in person. My middle daughter had especially fair/thin skin under her eyes and in so many photographs she looks like a zombie even though she looked perfectly fine in person. It was especially noticeable when she was a toddler. | 8 |
7lx9lb | Biology | Why aren’t dominant traits always more common than recessive traits? | Suppose a mom flower is red and if bred with other red flowers produces only red offspring. This is called 'true breeding' because no other colors pop out of these pairings. Suppose a dad flower is yellow and if bred with other yellow flowers produces only yellow offspring. Imagine an offspring flower that inherits one color gene variant from its true breeding red mom parent and one color gene variant from its true beeding yellow dad parent. A flower cannot be both pure red and pure yellow, so this situation has to resolve somehow. If the offspring turn out red, we say red is dominant to yellow. The offspring has a yellow gene variant, but it is not expressed because the dominant red variant overrides it. Now, to answer your question: Dominance has nothing to do with the frequency of the gene. Suppose there are 7 billion flowers on the earth, but only 10 of them have the red variant. Well those 10 will certainly be red, but it's not common. What happens in the next generation? The offspring of the red flowers will also be red. But if the red flowers bred with yellow partners (likely), they will also carry the yellow allele. When they have offspring of their own, there is a 50% chance that they will pass on the yellow gene variant rather than the red. Why wouldn't the red allele slowly increase in frequency and become fixed in the population? Well, what if yellow flowers prefer yellow mates to red mates? What if a predator (a bird, say) can see red flowers more easily than yellow? What if the red gene variant also causes failure to thrive? Or, what if there is nothing giving one a particular advantage over the other? In that case which becomes more common than it was in previous generations is more or less a matter of chance. | 8 |
8eqmj1 | Biology | Why are chimps so much stronger than humans when they are smaller and have less muscle mass? | Chimpanzees really aren't that small. The average size of a male chimp is about 110 lbs and they can easily reach 150 lbs - with some males having reached over 200 lbs in captivity. If standing erect, males are over 5 ft. That's very similar to our average height and weight range - well, of a human female anyway. Their muscle mass is easily equal to a humans. But the basic science as to how they're stronger than us is how their muscle fibers work. Muscles are basically a bunch of ropes connected together. When you lift or pull something, the necessary muscles pull, like a crane. Over the past million years or so, other primates have utilized "fast fibers" useful for sudden, tremendous effort - the rough maximum a human could lift is about 3 times our body weight (a 250 lbs powerlifter may be able to lift around 750 lbs). Chimps can lift around 5 times their body weight and pretty much all of them could be considered powerlifters - so, a 150 lbs chimpanzee would be as strong as the 250 lbs human (now, for fun, imagine what a 500 lbs Silverback Mountain Gorilla could lift - estimates of their strength run from 5 to 15(!) times what a human could lift. Our muscles have developed for Endurance - we can run, walk, or do things much longer than other primates. Let's say a chimp (or gorilla for that matter) tries to attack you; if it misses its first charge, a healthy human most likely could outrun and out-distance it fairly easily. In fact, humans have one of the best endurances in nature. We can, in theory, run at a moderate speed for hours - and walk, literally, all day and night without stopping. | 4 |
fcy2b7 | Biology | Why exactly were open wounds more dangerous ages ago, then the wounds today even without medical treatment? | > I mean back then it was literaly a deathscentence if you fall down in the grass and get a tiny open wound on your knee by a rock in the grass So I don't think this is necessarily true. Large, severe cuts were prone to infection back then just as they are now, but if people died from small cuts on their knees or hands we would have never survived past the primal stage. The human body is good at fighting regular, everyday infections. The problems you had in the past were with more major injuries - amputations (which they did a lot more of because of lack of other treatments), stab and gunshot wounds, broken bones etc. Basically, the world didn't get any less bacteria-filled or dangerous, you just see fewer infection related deaths because (1) we've learned to keep things in the medical sphere clean, and (2) because we have antibiotics. Any small wound infection that would have landed you in the grave 100 years ago would still land you in the hospital today, you just wouldn't die from it | 3 |
afg69c | Physics | What’s so special about an atomic bomb vs. any other bomb? Can someone explain the science to me of what exactly about an atomic bomb makes it so powerful and deadly? And why was it such a breakthrough to build the first nuke? | Atomic bombs generate an explosion by causing atoms of a nuclear material to split apart (fission) which releases an enormous amount of energy. It's basically extremely rapid radioactive decay. It was a monumental achievement because it wasn't long before that that we didn't even know atoms existed, and the basic science led to a new source of energy. | 4 |
a4kdqu | Culture | Why do Jehova's Witnesses have a bad rep? | They treat anyone who leaves the church absolutely horribly. They're more of a cult than a religion | 5 |
5va6ep | Economics | If a store buys something for $1 and sells it for $10 and it gets stolen, do they say they lost $1 or $10? | The $10 includes shipping, labour, etc. These are already on the profit and loss report. So reporting $10 would be double counting costs. | 17 |
bhg0oc | Culture | I have heard many times that Mozart was a generational genius who significantly changed music. What was it that he did that was so different than what came before? | He was basically a savant at writing the music he heard in his head onto paper -- his ability and to evoke a certain feeling or mood with a composition came naturally to him. | 3 |
hspzsr | Technology | What happens if you turn a computer off while it says not to turn it off? | Computers have several ways to "remember" things (store information). One is what computer uses when it's turned on, were it does calculations and runs different applications. You probably heard that computers can do billions of operations per second, and for that they need to be able to access a lot of data, very fast, without unnecessary delays. All this is done in memory called Random Access Memory (RAM). Unfortunately, making memory fast means it's very expensive to manufacture, which limits how much you can store there. And the way such memory is made fast for truly random access creates a very severe disadvantage - it "forgets" everything if power is turned off. That is where another type of memory comes to help - long term memory based on various technologies such as hard drives, SSDs and other flash memories, magnetic tapes, or even cloud storage. All that other memory is too slow for a processor to use directly. Various programs that you run on your computer have different needs for this long term storage. Some, like games, only read most of the time. Except when you change settings or make a progress that needs to be saved. Other programs, like a video editor, would need to both read and write quite a lot. But remember, in computer's terms accessing that memory is very slow, therefore computers try to avoid doing that as much as possible. One way to speed things up is when applications don't write all they have to disk immediately, but wait for the user to "save changes". Another technique is to use "disk cache" - where part of RAM is used to store data that needs to be written to the long term storage so that applications writing that data "think" it's all written down and can get on with the main tasks at hand. The Operating System (Windows in your case) would then write that data from the cache to the permanent location, slowly, as a background operation. There is a logic behind when the OS decides to start writing that data, it depends on how full the cache is and tries to prioritize user's experience to make work with the computer feel smooth and fast. Sometimes, when a user decides to shut down the computer, the disk cache is not yet empty. That means that there is still data in RAM that is not yet put into permanent storage and would be lost if power is turned off. Whatever that data is depends on usage of the computer prior to shut down. You might end up with game save to be gone. Or it might be that nothing will be lost because it was some telemetry of the OS or log files of the apps that would not get written down, stuff that you don't need anyway. But something will be lost, therefore better wait and let the OS shut down gracefully. | 4 |
6le7xi | Economics | How does trade work between the 28 members of the European Union internally and (more importantly) as a group with the rest of the world? Who contributes which goods/services and how much? Who makes proposals and agreements and who can shoot them down? how is the income divided? How are resources pooled between the 28 countries? Would a war between one of the 28 and another nation (say spain/argentina) effect how the other 27 trade with either? | > How does trade work between the 28 members of the European Union internally... The EU is considered a "single market". This means everyone uses the same rules and standards, and there are absolutely no trade restrictions or barriers between EU members. Everyone can trade with everyone at all times. In many respects this is just like how US trade works between states. > ...and (more importantly) as a group with the rest of the world? Trade agreements with other countries (or trading blocs) only need to happen one time. The EU negotiates as a single trading bloc (again the "single market"). While the initial negotiations are more complex (since all 28 members must agree to the same deal) - once you have the agreement, you can trade freely with all 28 EU members. The upside is of course since the EU is such a massive market, it can negotiate favorable trade deals (since few if any countries want to be left out). It also simplifies trade with the EU in the long run, because you only have to negotiate it once (rather than 28 times) and you only have to meet the one common standard (for example safety regulations) rather than 28 different sets of regulations. It also greatly benefits smaller countries, since they can all go "to the front of the line" along with all the other members. So Estonia gets the same great deal as Germany, but Germany also gets a better deal because everyone combines their economic clout as one entity. > Who contributes which goods/services and how much? There is no such agreement on specific goods and services - it's a free trade agreement. Anyone can produce something, and sell it to another EU member as if it was their own country. The differences in production really come down to differences in cost of labor, infrastructure quality and capacity, local environment, and various other factors. > Who makes proposals and agreements and who can shoot them down? The EU does, or at least its institutions, one of the most important being the European Comission. Also any single member can shoot it down. Everyone has to agree on new rules and agreements. > How are resources pooled between the 28 countries? All members contribute a percentage of their GNI (gross national income) which is around 1% - and this is used to fund EU activities. Larger economies obviously pay more, and less developed countries may receive more funding in return than their contribution. The general idea being that all of Europe is better off if we help make sure development across the bloc proceeds more rapidly than if left alone to their own devices. Other than that, all countries keep their own taxes / funds / resources. > Would a war between one of the 28 and another nation (say spain/argentina) effect how the other 27 trade with either? No, that defeats the purpose of the single market. For example, if you recall the 2nd gulf war - the UK and Poland were official belligerents against Iraq - yet intra-EU trade did not stop or even get reduced at all. Despite protests from other EU members | 2 |
967c6x | Biology | Does Ginger Ale and Saltines really help an upset stomach? | Ginger is good for easing stomach pains along with the carbonation from soft drinks so ginger ale is a good bet. I'm not sure how much saltines help you feel better but they do provide electrolytes and energy in the form of carbs if you are unintentionally voiding your system regularly. Edit: autocorrect | 8 |
8u81xj | Biology | Specifically, how does DNA code for such complex body features like the large networks of blood vessels and neurons? In other words, how do genes for amino acids lead to the usually flawless development of extremely advanced organs like the brain? | The answer is that that is does not. The layout of large veins and arteries are the same on everyone so how they develop are determined by the DNA. But the capillaries that connect the veins and arteries does not have predetermined shape so they grow towards areas that need oxygen. The result is that a retina have a unique pattern of blood vessels and can be used for identification with a IRIS scanner and a tumor that grow will get new blod vessels to provide it with oxygen. The same way the brain is in the large part determine by the DNA but all individual connection are not predefined. The information to completely describe a brain is many time larger then the information in our DNA. | 3 |
o9m80o | Biology | Why do horses need shoe? In nature, horses in the wild don't have those pieces of metal on their leg | In nature, horses run around on grasslands. People like to make roads, and the shoes protect the hooves from the road material (often stone/gravel or concrete). | 15 |
6gg94z | Other | Why do cops pull you over then ask you if you know why they pulled you over? | Then they can put in their report that you admitted to the crime at the scene and then you automatically lose if you bring it to court unless you can prove the cop was lying (good luck with that). That's why you're not obligated to say anything to the officer. | 39 |
5yqwmc | Technology | The difference between overdrive and distortion | Hard to exactly say without audio examples (which I do not have). Distortion can create a range of tones, depending on specific pedals, or effects used. Distortion is more "crunchy" and "loud" sounding, a sound common in punk rock, heavy metal, alternative...any kind of rock music, really. Overdrive is a "warmer" sound, less "crunchy" and more "fuzzy". Overdrive is typically considered a "bluesy" sound, and is found sometimes in the blues, and in some southern music. Very similar concepts, but the sounds are notably different. | 1 |
6viv8i | Biology | How do we know dinosaurs didn't have cartilage protrusions like human ears and noses? | You can actually construct a phylogenetic tree that correctly places saurusthician dinosaurs, such as T. Rex, as the ancestors of modern birds. You would see that nowhere along the genetic tree did cartiligeous appendages appear between dinos and birds, so we find it likely that dinos did not have ears or a discrete nose. We also base it on the musculoskeletal structure we see in fossils, and we model facial features. Basically, dinosaurs did not have the proper musculature to move their ears if they had them, so we find it unlikely once again. | 23 |
5svksu | Other | Why is the NEA against school vouchers? Question says it all | You can read why the NEA opposes it [here]( URL_0 ). While there is some argument that they favor unions - the overall argument is that vouchers have not shown that they lead to any better success than their respective counterparts in public schools (i.e. low income students in public schools did no better than low income students getting a voucher to attend private school). Moreover, vouchers allow the state to fund religious organizations. Sure, sending public money to a Catholic School sounds great - but then you would also have to send money to fund madrasas and maybe the Church of Satan would like to set up Satan Worship Elementary and the state would have to fund that too. | 3 |
abbe8j | Technology | What was the Y2K problem, what was the potential outcome, and how was it averted? Will we ever encounter something similar? | I was the Y2K compliance officer for my work. If I remember correctly, it consisted of a 1 day training seminar, a binder, and a couple of floppy disks. I had to go to each console and patch the OS manually. Took a couple of days, wasn’t very exciting. | 5 |
7dlfjh | Culture | When and why did saluting start in the military? | I've never looked into the validity of it, but what I was told while I was in the service is that it dates back to the time of medieval jousters raising the faceplates on their helmets as a sign of respect to each other. When they flip it up, it put their hand up into the position that we recognize as a salute today | 3 |
87y7ux | Mathematics | Why are coastlines oftentimes self-similar fractals? Examples of it being mentioned are 0:59 in [this] ( URL_0 ) video and 1:52 in [this] ( URL_1 ) video. To clarify: I'm **not** asking for an explanation of the coastline measurement paradox (something that has been answered before on this sub), I'm asking for an explanation as to why coastlines exhibit a self-similar fractal structure. | Coastlines aren't self-similar. Self-similarity is an easy way to construct a fractal, but not all fractals need to be self-similar. In mathematics you're simply more likely to encounter self-similar fractals as it's way easier to describe them or work with them in a proof. Fractal itself just means a shape that doesn't stop being "bumby", no matter how much you zoom into it. | 1 |
dnddly | Engineering | does the water I flush down my toilet or bath in ever become drinking water? How does this happen? | Yes and no. Depends. But yes. Most places treat the water so that it is clean enough to drink* and dump it back into the watershed. This is because people tend to get upset about the idea of drinking toilet water, regardless of how much it has been cleaned. A few places where water is becoming scarce, like parts of California, are recycling cleaned water directly back into reservoirs for use. People are not entirely happy about it but hey, drought. Deal with it. Ultimately, though, all water is recycled. That's kind of the whole water cycle thing. Water used upstream gets used again downstream. Water in the ocean evaporates and ends up back upstream. Edit: u/garysai made a good point. I should have said that the water isn't made clean enough to drink, it's made as clean or cleaner than it was when it was pulled from the watershed to be used the first time. So, if you're getting your water from a river, the water going back into the river is at least that clean. | 6 |
85qvw4 | Engineering | How do we manage the massive amount of dead people in large cities like LA or NYC? | According to NYC's website, a person dies about every 9 minutes in NYC. Honestly doesn't sound like very much to me. There are morgues in each borough that can handle many of these. And there's dozens of crematoriums and funeral homes throughout the city for permanent disposition (I lived within 5 minutes of two funeral homes). In short, the simple answer is there really isn't a "massive amount of dead people". There's a steady flow of dead with a robust public and private system set up to handle them. | 3 |
5y86eq | Culture | Why do film adaptations sometimes change things from the book that don't seem to make a difference? i watched Fifty Shades Darker last night, one of the sex scenes took place at Ana's house, however in the book, that sex scene took place at Christian's house. Why do film adaptations change things like that? i get some things don't translate well to the big screen, or certain scenes can affect the movie's rating, but in this particular example, i can't think of a logical reason why they changed the location of the sex scene | I don't know about this particular book/movie combination but I know of several others. Movies have a very limited time. They need to get the essence of the whole movie out in just 100 minutes or so. They worry more about pacing between key plot points. They may need to rearrange the order of things or combine characters or events in order to save time or prevent a lull. A book has the luxury of slowing down for a chapter. For this case, it could help seque the film from the previous scene and/or to the next scene. There's also issues with cinematography. Perhaps the director thought Ana's house worked better with the camera angles and storyboarding that he/she had in mind for the scene. | 1 |
birfew | Other | Why do certain objects in our homes 'crack' at night? Certain object would make a 'crack like' sound at night. Its too quick to pinpoint which object it is, but it happens seemingly every night. | Change of temperature. Warm and expanded during the day. Relatively cooler at night, and thus they contract, and they creak/crack as they do so. Depends a lot on the material, and its size. | 2 |
9wxq5h | Engineering | engine liters and how they define the size of an engine I was just watching a YouTube video of chevys new 2.7 liter turbo charged 4 cylinder in their Silverado trucks. And I remembered ford has a 2.7 liter v6 and was confused how this actually works. I know most v8’s by their liters. 4.7, 5.7, 6.0 etc etc and googled if a 4.7 or 5.7 could be a v6 and nothing was produced. So How is it possible to have a 2.7 liter in a 4 cylinder and a v6 variant but not the bigger liters in smaller engine variants? | Just to cover it in case you don't know. V8, V6, V4, these refer to the number of cylinders in the engine and their configuration. V6, 6 cylinders in a V shape. The liters refers to the total volume of the cylinders. The reason why 2.7 liter V4 is a new thing, even though there are 2.7L V6s. Because each cylinder needs to be bigger, each cylinder is 0.675L to total 2.7. With a V6 each cylinder would only be 0.45L. | 6 |
f4mvuh | Mathematics | What is a Fourier Transform and why was it necessary to render the image of the total solar eclipse? URL_0 An explanation of the whole comment would be great. I tried to look up Fourier transform on Wikipedia but it was a lot of math. | A Fourier Transform is a way to split something complex into its simpler parts. ELI5: Imagine you get served a cup of coffee with milk and sugar. You didn’t make it, so you don’t know how much beans, milk and sugar are in it. You only know the sum of the combined ingredients. If you want to find out how much the constituent parts are, a Fourier transform could help you split it back out again. But then for maths (e.g. sines) and not for drinks of course. It’s used a lot in signal processing. | 4 |
guhwk7 | Biology | Can animals get PTSD ? | Yes. All brains work by association of stimulus with feeling or with other stimulus. Stimulus associated with a time of trauma (shouting, gunshots, the smell of burnt flesh etc.) Will cause stress as that is what they are associated with in the animals brain. I have seen this most with dogs and any dog trainer will tell you the same. I don't know much about other animals though | 6 |
5vqm8a | Other | How do they synchronize the sound so perfectly with images in complex musical movie scenes such as the last 11 minutes of whiplash ? I mean, they must've shot so many takes of that scene, probably on several days, but after the final montage, the sound, the music, the images, all fit together near perfection. | It depends on the type of music and the level of synchronization needed. I assume you are talking about very accurate synchronization and not just background music that doesn't need to be aligned with specific events on screen. If the music is electronic, it's just a matter of aligning the music track with the video track. Electronic music can be altered or tailored to fit the visuals exactly. If the music requires live players and a conductor as in orchestral music, one technique is to screen the visuals to the conductor via a screen located behind the orchestra. This allows the conductor to react in real time to the visuals (and the players to the conductor). One of the hardest synchronizations is actually found mostly in cartoons, where the orchestra is tasked with sound effects or otherwise with direct reaction to what's on screen. Ever seen the Loony Toons "musicals" like "Kill the Wabbit"? The instruments need to react to the footsteps of the character, for example. Or "Bugs Bunny Opera" where the orchestra and conductor actually need to react to a mirror image of themselves. This kind of synchronization needs to be very precise because orchestral sound does not tolerate too much post manipulation. | 3 |