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[ "There have been studies where exactly what you suggested was attempted (with consent of the patient) for two months or sometimes even longer for very obsese patients. It worked fine, provided they supported the patient with electrolytes and vitamins. _URL_0_ There is one BIG caveat, though. In some patients, fasting can cause an electrolyte imbalance, and re-feeding after fasting can cause profound problems, the so-called \"refeeding syndrome\". If you ever saw the miniseries \"Band of Brothers\", when they liberate the concentration camp, and have to lock all the liberated folks back inside the camp, that was the reason for what they did. If you fast for a very long time and then just start eating again, the electrolyte imbalance can be particularly bad, and can make you drop dead from a cardiac arrhythmia." ]

[ "The captains basically saw two ways to pack slaves. One way was to transport fewer slaves than the ship could actually carry in hopes of reducing the disease and deaths among slaves, this was called \"loose packing\". The other that you inquire about was the cruel way, \"tight packing\". This way meant that the slaves were packed very tightly in order to fill the whole ship. They were tied ankle to wrist and crammed into the smallest spaces. The idea behind this was that the more slaves a ship had, the more profit they could make. The ships's smell was appalling and in the worst case scenario the slaves were not provided with any kind of hygiene. This would lead to more deaths and actually would not work as well as they thought." ]

[ "You don't feel temperature directly, you feel the rate at which heat leaves your body. So it really depends on the material's heat conductivity and how it's arranged as a heat sink. Generally, the rate of heat transfer is inversely proportional to temperature, all else equal, and since you can't reach absolute zero, there is no maximum rate of heat transfer. Thus, there is no limit to how cold things 'feel' in this sense, but you'd probably damage your nerves and skin before you got anywhere near that cold, so this isn't really a meaningful statement. At some point you'll just destroy your sense of touch, and it will feel very painful and quickly cause numbness, not a sense of coldness." ]

[ "Imagine that you want to make a long trip and decide to always go north. It's easy: you know how to use a compass, you just have to follow this direction. But then you reach the North Pole. Some people have warned you that the concept of \"north\" is a bit singular there. Your compass isn't indicating anything useful anymore. You can ask the friendly polar bear there in which direction is north: he will answer that your question is meaningless, that all directions are south, north ceases to exist at this point. Here it's the same thing, except north is \"past\", south is \"future\", the Earth is spacetime and there are no polar bears." ]

[ "My knowledge of this is pure historiography, so maybe a historian of the period can elaborate, but the answer is no. Leopold von Ranke is largely credited with creating the discipline of history itself, so for much of his career he was unassailable. Late in his life there were some critics of his methods, but he was, for his day, pretty revolutionary. I'm not sure what kind of criticism you're seeing in your department, but I don't know if I would categorize modern historiography's take on Ranke as 'harsh'. The discipline has grown and evolved, mostly for the better, and Ranke is an important figure even if his ideas are no longer applicable. Source: Any historiography book ever. I referenced *From Historical Methods* by Powell and Prevenier because that's what I have on the shelf next to me." ]

[ "[Ptolemy's map](_URL_1_) was one of the first maps of the world. Ptolemy's Geography (written 1st century AD) was a description of the world at the time; this was a text, not a map. There were attempts to translate Ptolemy's Geography into a map in the 15th century, and the result is the image above. There was a significant emphasis on cartography during this period for a few reasons. Firstly, rulers who had empires wanted to know more about their own empires; it would be helpful for them to visualize their empires through a map. Also, diplomacy developed through trade; one needed maps to trade effectively, and rulers were interested in knowing the empires around them. Further, it would be easier for your ambassador to get to another country and begin forming diplomatic relations and alliances if they had a map. [Source: \"Early Modern Europe 1450-1789\" by Merry Weisner-Hanks](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "A closed border is more than just a state of mind. It's armed military patrols, it's shooting unarmed civilians, it's an expensive program of detention and deportation that makes your country look ugly and authoritarian to people living within and without. France is getting refugees from the war it started in Libya. They show up in a boat, and you have three choices. 1. Indefinite detention without trial. 2. Deportation to a definite death sentence. 3. Let them stay. The solution to refugees in Europe does not come from the end of a gun, but from taking a serious look at the reasons why people risk their lives overloading boats to escape." ]

[ "Let's say you have a 7 lane interstate. At each end there is a toll booth. In the past payments were processed manually and there was a receipt that had to print, but the printers were slow. Only do much traffic could get through. Fast forward to the future where you pay with the touch of a button and get an instant receipt or pre-pay before you get there and just zoom right through. Ignoring I know nothing about toll booths, this is basically why. The info in the past couldn't be processed as quickly, so there is always a bottleneck. Today it's much faster. I'm not sure if we've reached the physical limitations of the current infrastructure though. I know we've come up with better ways of transporting the info such as the digital equivalent of carpooling or taking the bus. Only so far you can go before you'll have to expand the interstate or change to a better mode of transport. Like bullet trains...or Elon Musk's idea of the hyper train system. What is it called again?" ]

[ "It means that instead of pulling back on the bowstring the archer would push outward with his left hand, keeping the bowstring in its drawn position. By pushing the actual body of the bow forward with his body and not bothering with pulling back the draw you can partially compensate for the rather absurd draw weight of a longbow. I don't know whether this model is accepted or not because I'm no medievalist, but it certainly seems plausible and helps account both for the ability of English bowmen to fire those things and helps explain one of the many reasons why it would have taken a lifetime of training to learn and keep yourself in practice. As I believe /u/Rittermeister says, the longbow is less like a big bow and more like a human ballista" ]

[ "Ease of use. Becoming proficient with a bow could take years and requires a certain amount of strength. You could teach someone to use a musket in a fraction of the time." ]

[ "All fluid flows can be characterized by the Reynolds Number, the ratio of inertial forces to viscous (think fluid friction). If the Reynolds Number is below a threshold (generally used thresholds are 2300 for flows in a pipe, and 5x10^5 for external flows (like air over a wing). If the Reynolds Number is below the threshold, the flow is laminar, and the fluid particles flow in an orderly fashion. If you were to draw a line tracking the path of one particle, there would be lots of particles following the same path behind it. If you were to draw lots of these streamlines, they'd be parallel for the most part, and would never cross. If the Reynolds Number gets too high, you enter turbulent flow, where eddies (pockets of very slow moving fluid) start to form and disrupt the smooth flow. If you were to draw lines tracking particles, you would see swirls and lines crossing." ]

[ "The same temperature air comes out either way, it is just the fast air mixes with the cooler surrounding air and also blows away the warm air near the skin." ]

[ "It is hard to predict any breakthrough over such a long period of time. Tinnitus is a symptom, not an affliction itself. Depending on the cause, there may be a many different methods to treat it. To me what seems the most likely permanent fix for fifty years of R & D is the use of a [cochlear implant](_URL_1_), once it's better developed and more accessible. Bypassing the inner ear appears to avoid your problem altogether. Sucks to hear (see what I did there) you have this, but you've got a full life ahead of you, and medicine is progressing at lighting speed. I can't find the article you referred to, but I'm positive there'll be wacky doctors out there designing a fix for you." ]

[ "In pharmacology the figures of [EC50](_URL_3_) and [IC50](_URL_2_) are measures of how much of a substance is required to induce a desired effect or to inhibit function. These numbers vary a lot depending on the site of action, nature of the pharmacological compound, type of interaction, etc. It is all covered under the fields of [pharmacodynamics](_URL_0_) and [pharmacokinetics](_URL_1_) - and answering that question actually _does_ require one to know how a particular active compound works. Without going into that detail then, think about the normal drugs you take. An over-the-counter acetaminophen tablet can range from 250 - 500 mg. Loratidine, a second-generation antihistamine one takes for allergies, is commonly in 10 mg pills. Those agents, ingested orally, actually [goes through the liver first anyways](_URL_4_), so the percentage of drugs that actually get to systemic circulation is much lower. Compare this to a venomous bite, which injects directly to the blood." ]

[ "By making it a dome the force of pressure inside is born by the compressive strength of the metal and not by its resistance to bending. This allows a thinner metal to be used." ]

[ "School collects box tops & sends them to the company. The company sends the school money. The idea is that people will buy more products from the company if they know it'll help the local schools. It's just an advertising campaign." ]

[ "This is the best explanation I've ever read: _URL_0_" ]

[ "You should get your blood sugar levels checked. You could be pre-diabetic or hyperglycemic, if you're having that kind of reaction get it checked soon." ]

[ "Life insurance premiums for board makerscare huge. They breathe in tiny fibreglass particles and sniff chemicals all day. Life expectancy is 55 max. Plus, it takes a long time to make one." ]

[ "Here's a pretty good explainer. _URL_0_ Basically it comes down to different memory, different promises (reliability and service life), and different marketing." ]

[ "It repeals a law that prohibits cities from enacting rent control laws. So if it passes nothing would happen or be mandated, but cities would be allowed to do so. Cons are that economists generally say that rent control does not help affordability, and that what really needs to happen is more to be built. Pros are some other folks say it really doesn't dissuade building and people are still gonna build because there is money to be made, with or without rent control, and that while everyone is waiting for building to get done rent control is something that cities can do right now to help keep cities from becoming only affordable for the wealthy, and to keep the middle and lower income in their apartments" ]

[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]

[ "When you pour in the hot water the atmosphere inside the bottle is 1) heated to the temperature of the hot water and 2) saturated with water vapor at the same temperature. When you the mix the water inside the closed bottle the hot atmosphere rich in water vapor is cooled down to the temperature of the mixture, causing the air 1) to reduce the pressure due to lower temperature and 2) let water condense so that the atmosphere is then saturated in water vapor again at the lower temperature. The latter effect causes the biggest reduction in pressure since gas turns to liquid." ]

[ "Second law of thermodynamics, the same thing happens when you pour some milk in your coffee, it will dilute itself until it's equally distributed" ]

[ "It might be useful if you could specify the time period you're looking for. From Elizabethan times to now, for example, or from Nelson's time to the Victorian Navy, then the question will be easier to answer." ]

[ "Can you specify which law you are referring too? (There are several) As to their ability, in the U.K. there isn't a Bill of Rights like in the US. Parliament can pass pretty much whatever it wants and it is only the unwritten understanding of what are fundamental freedoms that would keep them restrained. Also, in general the free speech clause has been interpreted to not always apply to obscene materials. As far as the justification, you'll have to specify which law you are referring to, but it is probably going to revolve around the belief that porn (or certain types of it) have an unhealthy influence on society. And as to why there aren't riots, I think there is a lot more to worry about in the U.K. at the moment than porn." ]

[ "It's because the nerves that detect heat also detect spicy hottness and pain. So if something is spicy lets say 50% of these nerves tell your brain 'hey i detect something here' -your brain obviously knows that these are the hot/spicy/pain guys and thinks\"oh it's probably something spicy\" But when it's also hot the same food will trigger even more of these nerves and maybe 75% of your nerves tell the brain there's something, so your brain thinks oh it must benreally hot. Note: while a single nerve can only send \"yes something here\" and \"nope, all quiet\" many things can trigger it to say yes. (In this case heat and capsaicin which is the chemical tat tastes spicy. ) Luckily the brain gets way more information than one nerve and interprets a lot more information and the context to make the richt assumption about what's going on..." ]

[ "The temperature sensors in your skin can only detect relative changes in temperature. Not absolute temperature. You can show this by doing a simple experiment with three cups of water. one cup of ice water, one cup of room temperature water, and one cup of hot water. Place a finger of your right hand in the ice water and a finger of your left hand in the hot water, wait for ~5 minutes (for the temperature sensors to acclimatise) then place both in the room temperature water. Your right finger should feel hot, your left finger should feel cold (but both are in the same water)." ]

[ "What you are looking for is Mars Geothermal gradient A brine and clathrate (aqueous liquid) can exist at around 250K the mean surface temperature on Mars is around 220K The vital isotherm for our briny clathrate aqueous liquid is 250K, Isotherms at this tempurature would be found (according to our current, but not perfect models) at around 4.7 to 2.8 km deep depending on the ice saturation level of the regolith Fresh water would require another 25K of warming and would require atleast another 4km of depth (read 8 km deep total) [source for everything on this subject!!!](_URL_0_) also Im a geologist EDITED a few things to make it more clear and correct a number" ]

[ "Neat question! I found a good article on this: Taira et al, 2003: \"Deep and Bottom Currents in the Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench, Measured with Super-Deep Current Meters\" _URL_0_ At the bottom of the trench, they observe a flow of a few cm/s either eastward or westward, depending on tides, [inertial oscillations](_URL_1_) and other fluctuations. The average measured velocity was essentially zero (0.2 +/- 1.2 cm/s). The water at the bottom of the Mariana Trench basically doesn't go anywhere, although the tides do stir it around a bit and probably gradually mix it with water from shallower parts of the ocean." ]

[ "Well, I can't tell you what day-to-day astrology was like for the average person, but I can tell you *something* about astrology in the 17th century. [This](_URL_0_) is a nocturnal. Basically, you can use it to tell you what time it is using the stars, and a rough idea of your position. That particular nocturnal is from *La Belle*, a French ship of new world colonization. On it, there are the zodiacal constellations, set up for astrology rather than navigation. There are references on a couple other French nocturnals to lucky and unlucky days to voyage, and it may be that that's why *La Belle*'s nocturnal has the astrological calendar on it. In any case, it was important enough to the navigator that commissioned it to have it included on their custom-designed navigational equipment." ]

[ "A solar year lasts 365 days, 5 hours and 49 minutes. We add in the 5 hours 49 minutes with leap days, but there's still a missing 11 minutes. We had been using the calendar for 1300 years, so those 11 minutes extra added up to 10-12 days or so. In 1752 all the western countries finally switched over to the new, more correct \"gregorian\" calendar." ]

[ "So first we really need to define what an assault rife actually is. The most common definition one usually hears is magazine fed, intermediate cartridge and has the ability to fire in single shot and some manner of automatic. Some people like to add an effective range to that definition. So with this definition you could say that yes the StG-44 was exactly that. But really, we define *assault rifle* based on the description of the StG-44." ]

[ "hi! you may be interested in these posts, all answered by our own /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov * [Through the microscope - Georgy Zhukov?](_URL_2_) - comments on the meat grinder questions * [Why are certain generals like Zukhov, von Moltke the Elder, Lee and Grant considered geniuses? How is the legacy of a general evaluated?](_URL_0_) * [What made Zhukov so successful during WWII?](_URL_1_) - follow-up to previous post * [How crucial was General Georgy Zhukov in the Soviet success on the Eastern Front?](_URL_3_) * [Do we know what Georgy Zhukov's thought of the other best-remembered generals from WWII?](_URL_4_)" ]

[ "Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I remember, back when these conventions were being made the minor scale was actually more predominant than the major scale in music. So when music gradually shifted to being major dominant the \"default key\" shifted from A minor to C major." ]

[ "Science. The food manufacturer doesnt know how long it takes for your oven to heat up. But they do know that when its 400° its at 400°. They know how long it needs to cook for at specific temperatures. So they are trying to eliminate as many variables as they can so you can replicate their results and get properly cooked food. & nbsp; Now if youre reheating leftover pizza or something then whatever." ]

[ "It is one of the primary sources of energy for humans. It is part of the cost of manufacturing and transporting just about everything, so the price of oil affects the cost to manufacture and transport things." ]

[ "Badly... People would use it as an excuse to do stupid things like steal, kill and commit other crimes." ]

[ "Evaporation sucks up heat. Wind/moving air increases the rate of heat transfer between two objects, and so it makes the water evaporate more quickly. This is why you sweat - it cools you off. But if you're not hot enough to be sweating, it means that water evaporating off your skin makes you feel cold." ]

[ "It is a matter of heat transfer. Specifically the heat transfer coefficient. Compare the coefficients of the two and you will see that your body (mostly fluid water) transfers heat energy more effectively through fluid rather than air." ]

[ "If they successfully faked their death, doesn't that mean no one would know?" ]

[ "_URL_2_ columnist William Saletan waded into this issue several years ago with similar questions to yours. Here's an article posted AFTER his initial article and several followups, all of which can be reached via links within the article. It's an interesting journey with commentary from psychologists, statisticians, and other relevant experts. _URL_2_" ]

[ "Several reasons: - Personal profit and short-term thinking; - Not believing that the problems are real; - Believing that market forces will solve the problems (generally accompanied by a belief that government intervention is a bad thing in just about everything); - An expectation that technology will solve the problems; - Underestimating the extent of the environmental issues. Normally, there's a combination of at least two of these reasons." ]

[ "Money and politics pretty much, NASA's budget is nothing compared to what is used to be and back then US was completing with Russia to be the first to the moon" ]

[ "They buy the information from other data aggregators." ]

[ "Depends on the country. Some countries have laws in place that ensure equal service for all providers using the same network, i.e. the network owner aren't allowed to diminish the service in any way for providers who \"rent\" their network. As for your particular example, they're both owned by the same corporation, so I would presume that their subscription plans (and pricing models) are targeted at different markets." ]

[ "To fight off \"adverse selection\". In other words, so that you can't buy insurance each time you get sick and then drop it each time you feel better. An alternative to that would be to exclude pre-existing conditions coverage, but that is hard to enforce because it is much harder to say your didn't know your house was on fire on a given date, then to say you didn't notice you were bleeding from the butt on a given date. Also, there are rules against it." ]

[ "You pay extra for HBO. Cable networks rely on ad time. Faster credits means more time for ads." ]

[ "To some, it is a vital part of the issue. Personally, I don't have a problem with the pipeline, but I am disgusted with abuse of eminent domain. You rarely see people get mad about eminent domain abuse because frankly, people don't care about eminent domain seizure unless it's happening to them. In this particular case, most of the seizure would happen on large plots of land where the government would force an easement of a small amount of it. It's really hard for the average person to get behind this when it's much easier to demagogue the enviroment or job creation or geopolitics." ]

[ "They don't. They just care about your money. Come Easter they will remind you that the best way to commemorate the sacrifice of the lord and saviour Jesus Christ is to lease a 2016 Ford Escalade < /sarcasm >" ]

[ "They mean the same thing. Or rather, semiconductor lasers are a subset of solid state lasers." ]

[ "* LED: Standard display using LED backlights to light up the display screen * OLED: Does not use backlights, the physical screen produces the light * AMOLED: Each pixel can be turned on/off individually, thus saving power * SuperAMOLED: The screen has a touchscreen built in, rather than being a separate layer on top of the display screen" ]

[ "You try walking around with a blindfold on and see how long it takes for you to hurt yourself. Now amplify the fear you should feel by a million because animals don't have hospitals and minor injuries can easily be fatal. Also, there are things that will eat them. There aren't things that would eat humans really. They do it because it is much safer to stop moving when eyesight is your main sensory ability." ]

[ "Your brain cells require a lot of energy to work at full capacity, and your visual processing center is a fairly large portion of your brain (relative to the amount of space your eyes take up on your body). Put simply, your brain can choose which incoming sensory information is worth dedicating chemical energy to fully process. If you are deep in thought that requires significant frontal lobe usage (for some decision making) or if you're tired and don't have the energy for much of anything, your brain could turn its processing power away from your visual field. You'd still be processing the incoming light waves to an extent, but not much of it would reach your consciousness." ]

[ "It's breathing on the same time that one foot hits the ground- that can cause your diaphragm to cramp since one side is constantly stressed. Try and vary your breathing so the same side isn't striking the ground and it should be fine" ]

[ "How do you know you don’t have exercise induced asthma?" ]

[ "Fireflies come out in early summer to mate, then lay eggs in the soil. The eggs hatch in late summer as glowing larvae (known as glowworms) which forage through the rest of the summer and hibernate through the winter (some species hibernate through several winters). In late spring they pupate, emerging as fireflies to start the cycle again." ]

[ "Although flying in a straight line may be a more energy efficient path, the erratic flight patterns mean that their movement is less predictable by predators such as birds. Overtime this evolutionary advantage has stuck." ]

[ "By increasing the voltage you are reducing the amount of amps which will flow, as voltage is proportional to the current. Volts = Current x Resistance (V=IR) Power can be calculated by the following equation. Power = Current Squared x Resistance The resistance in powerlines can’t really be changed too much, so increasing the voltage, reduces current and in turn reduces power. Same reasoning as why they have high voltage power lines" ]

[ "Fluid Mechanics guy here, When you feel cool, it's because you are losing heat. In a fluid such as air, heat is transferred via convection. All things held equal, the amount of heat transferred through convection depends on the differences in temperature and velocity between the fluid and your body. The faster and colder the air, the more heat is exchanged. The same principle applies to mass transfer, (i.e. evaporation) except now humidity is a factor, not temperature. So the drier and faster the air, the more water is evaporated from your skin. As GrimeWizard stated, evaporation requires body heat, so the more water evaporated, the more heat you lose! So the combined effects of convection and mass transfer are responsible for how good that nice cool breeze feels. **tl;dr** convection and mass transfer are responsible for cooling you down, a cold dry wind is most effective." ]

[ "You're probably looking at a picture that has HDR techniques applied to it - essentially they take several pictures - some adjusted to bring out the details in the shadows (but bleaching out the highlights) and some to bring out details in the highlights (but voiding out the shadows) and then all the exposures are composited together into one picture. So essentially you are seeing contrast ranges that the human eye just can't pick up - but neither can a camera in one single shot - it's just a trick. [Here's an example of HDR in action](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "You're actually modeling a spaceship going relativistic speeds (and at that rate of compression, pretty close to the speed of light), where time passes slow on the ship compared to on the earth. Your question is the same as \"if there was some means of instantaneous communication, what would the people on the ship see of Earth?\". And the answer is \"Time lapse\". Go to Youtube and type that term in, and then find a time lapse film that compresses things to make them 43000 times faster (roughly one hour in every five years) or something near to it, and you have it. Here's an example: [a year in two minutes.](_URL_0_) This one's going at about 525,000 times normal speed. So slow it down to a fifth of its speed (normally a tenth, but in this film they didn't photograph during the half of time that the environment was at night) and you're pretty close to the effect you'd get in your own scenario." ]

[ "Since you allow triangles to overlap, why can't I just connect every pair of points with every other point?" ]

[ "You open a pizza shop and hire your nephew to take phone orders. For the first few weeks, you only get two or three calls per evening, so you get by with just one phone line and only your nephew assisting you. Then, someone posts a fantastic review of your place on reddit and the business explodes. Now you've got dozens of calls per night, your nephew can't keep up, and customers aren't getting through because your one measly phone line is always busy. So, you hire your nephew's school friends to be his fellow phone operators, and you call the phone company to set up additional lines. They set it up so that when a customer dials your number, it will ring to whichever one of your phones isn't busy at the moment. Now, you can accept multiple calls at the same time. Replace phone lines with web servers and you've got the idea. Basically, routing incoming requests to whichever server is the least busy, even though to your customers it all looks like one phone number / web address." ]

[ "The cross sectional area of a hollow block of steel is going to be significantly less than the cross sectional area of a solid block of steel simply because for much of the hollow block, there just isn't any steel. XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX vs. X X XXXXXX X X XXXXXX XXXXXX The solid block has 24 X's worth of steel area, the hollow one only has 16 X's worth of steel area." ]

[ "Light is a form of electromagnet radiation. It has a frequency that's in a particular range which we can see, but there are lots of other frequencies we can't see. The idea that electromagnetic radiation can pass through things is probably not at all strange to you. For example: - Light can pass through air, water and glass - X-rays can pass through flesh and soft tissue - Radio waves can pass through buildings and people These are all examples of electromagnetic radiation of different frequencies. So what decides which frequencies can pass through which substances? It's all to do with the structure of the material, at an atomic level. And I'll leave it there.... because that's about the limit of my knowledge. But hopefully someone will be able to explain how the structure of a material affects how the material interacts with different frequencies." ]

[ "CGP Grey has an excellent video describing exactly this: The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Expl…: _URL_0_" ]

[ "This CGP Grey video does a really good job of explaining it all. _URL_3_" ]

[ "Because testicles are descended ovaries, and as such the nerves in them are wired up to the part of your brain that covers the abdomen. (similarly, the scrotum is made of fused labia skin, and the penis is an enlarged clitoris that wraps round the urethra.) In the womb, we start out gender-neutral, and specific sexual traits develop along the way." ]

[ "You should get your blood sugar levels checked. You could be pre-diabetic or hyperglycemic, if you're having that kind of reaction get it checked soon." ]

[ "Amber is basically fossilized tree sap/resin. The sap gets into the earth in one way or another, gets put under pressure, and fossilizes into amber. In order for an animal to be trapped in amber it first must be trapped in the tree sap, then the tree sap gets fossilized and the animal gets immortalized in the amber for us to find." ]

[ "> _URL_0_ No, it isn't true. I suspect the statement was misheard; *if* the dam had been poured as a single job it would still be liquid and crack. But it wasn't because they knew that." ]

[ "Alright, so a theory dictates that when someone is under stress, their brain takes in information in two ways: your primal sensory channel (touch, sight, sound, etc.), and your intellectual channel, which is how your brain tries to make sense of everything and put it into words. Researches conducted showed that when you are occupying your primal sensory channel, it makes you remember stuff less vividly. A lot of your brains processing power is dedicated to what you feel with your hands, so when you use them, your brain doesn't work as hard as it normally would at making sense of things. The stress ball works to mute your intellectual channel, and directs your stress at the ball instead, the same way a baby calms down when it has its pacifier. TL;DR Stress balls keep your hands busy with repetitive motion. [Source](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "Talking completely out of my ass here, maybe it has to do with some instinctive grooming drive that we inherited from our ancestors. If you go to the zoo or watch a documentary, you can see that apes/etc. instinctively groom each other; so some people probably get a sense of pleasure from seeing such things because there's an instinctive drive (and psychological reward) to remove/pop/clean such things." ]

[ "It's an old trick. It makes the roads look better on film. They actively spray it down with a hose to make it look shiny. Source: watching Terminator 2 with production note subtitles on. Very interesting stuff." ]

[ "They have sensors that detect both the speed of the wheel and the power that the engine is putting to the wheel. As long as there is traction some of the power to the wheel will be used to move the vehicle, therefore the wheel spins slower. But as soon as it slips, the wheel speeds up but there's no change in the power the vehicle is applying, this triggers the computer as a slip and it takes action accordingly." ]

[ "A lot of the answers to why some medications work for some conditions but not others, despite seeming to produce an increase in the same neurotransmitters, is that we don't really know. The efficacy of medication for various conditions is often established through testing - i.e. give it to somebody and see what happens. Until rather recently, we hadn't even visualized the protein that SSRIs act on, and only identified which protein that was more recently than you'd think. The prevailing theory though, as I understand it, is that where the neurotransmitters happen is just as important as which NT is being affected. So, dopamine in your nucleus accumbens is not the same as dopamine in your pineal body, and acting on proteins that regulate those levels in those places will naturally have a distinct effect from one another." ]

[ "Because they work. Scam artists and lazy people see an idea that brings money for little work, and they emulate that idea. Why fix something that isnt broken, right? Similar idea to why there are a million different versions of Minecraft and Bejewelled. The people peddling these things aren't innovators. They don't desire to expand on previous formulas and improve the world. They just want quick cash, and the easiest way to do that is to do the exact same thing other people have done." ]

[ "Our intelligence. Tool making and fashioning weapons and traps seems to be our best bet." ]

[ "Part of the presence of pain is its *purpose*. Your nervous system continues to remind your brain the pain you've experienced so you know to protect it. For us, that means going to a doctor for a broken finger. But in nature, that means \"I need to guard this finger until it heals, or else I may die. If I try to use it before it's healed, I may just get worse, and then I'll die. If I do anything wrong, I'll die.\" As long as it hurts, you know it's not functional. As long as it's not functional, you're in that much more danger of predators. ***TL;DR When in doubt, you'll die (in the wild)***" ]

[ "There were many instances of violence against Jewish survivors of the concentration camps when they tried to return home and claim their homes and property. You can read more at the [Holocaust Memorial Museum](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "Is this a homework question? It says in our [rules](_URL_0_): Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come to us with questions about what you've learned. This is explained further [in this [META] thread](_URL_1_). You can also consider asking the helpful people at /r/HomeworkHelp." ]

[ "There are 2 comments I cant see, maybe they have already explained... A black hole can be considered to have no spatial dimensions - a singularity. (this may actually be because the laws of physics start doing strange things in a black hole) A black hole however, has other properties such as mass, charge, and angular momentum. Not all black holes have the same mass (or charge and angular momentum). The mass of a black hole (really of any body) determines its gravitational field. The heavier an object the more it pulls you. The event horizon of black holes is not really a physical surface. It is the boundary of a region where the pull of gravity is so strong that light and matter cannot escape and eventually end up in the singularity. And since the gravitational field is determined by the mass of the black hole so is the size of the region where even light cannot escape. Hope this helps." ]

[ "It's about the *density* of the rays. They spread out as they go further out from the sun." ]

[ "Black lights give off light that our eyes cannot handle very well so it is hard to focus (see 'refraction'). Black lights also tend to cause items around them to fluoresce, i.e. glow, which may make it harder to see some of the edges of things." ]

[ "Your brain cells require a lot of energy to work at full capacity, and your visual processing center is a fairly large portion of your brain (relative to the amount of space your eyes take up on your body). Put simply, your brain can choose which incoming sensory information is worth dedicating chemical energy to fully process. If you are deep in thought that requires significant frontal lobe usage (for some decision making) or if you're tired and don't have the energy for much of anything, your brain could turn its processing power away from your visual field. You'd still be processing the incoming light waves to an extent, but not much of it would reach your consciousness." ]

[ "Short Answer: Nothing. The transition seems to have gone smoothly. North Korea is still just a dictatorial, backwards, and dear leader worshiping as ever." ]

[ "What's the subject of the graduate seminar? I don't think anyone will really be able to help you unless you narrow it down a bit. Is this a class with a specific focus or is it a class where you are meant to perhaps start your first chapter in a thesis/dissertation? If you've come to graduate school you obviously have an interest in history, so what subject are you particularly interested in?" ]

[ "So, one of the reasons we get motion sick is because the brain cannot rationalize the movement of a car with our bodies movement. Basically, we're moving, but the brain can't figure out why because we are not physically moving. This sort of disorientation in our equilibrium is attributed to poison or toxin by our brain, forcing us to expel our stomach contents to rid us of the poison. Taking away the closed off and immobile atmosphere inside a car is a good way to relieve motion sickness because it tricks the brain into thinking its true movement. Also it helps relieve the symptoms leading up to vomiting. Sweating and dizziness can be alleviated by cool air." ]

[ "Our brains didn't evolve with cars in mind. They evolved with, like, being hunted by a jaguar (or whatever) in mind. So your brain doesn't know what to do with a car. It thinks hey, we're sitting, our body's not really doing anything physical, there's very little activity or stimulus... this seems like a good time to go to bed! What it gets amped up for is you running, lots of stimulus and physical exertion and excitement... in other words, the stuff you go through when being hunted by a jaguar. Try falling asleep while running. Your brain won't go for it." ]

[ "This is more complicated than most people think. Most people will say it's because the temperature of the water and the air rising, but this is not true as the phenomena is also pressent when you take a cold shower. The curtain is pulled inwards due to the principle of Bernoulli. The principle says that when you got a flow that is is going faster the pressure to the sides will get lower. So with your shower the water creates the stronger flow with the result of the lower pressure. Because the pressure on the otherside of you curtain is not changed your curtain is pushed/pulled in to the shower." ]

[ "She's not, it's your brain not quite understanding what a picture is, and so attempting to trick you into thinking she's interested and wants to copulate. But seriously, it's your brain extrapolating the information it senses of a 2D object with static simulated depth, causing the depth to be calculated irrespective of the position of the observer. The depth information of looking at her from the side doesn't exist in the picture, therefor your brain decides you're looking straight at her." ]

[ "Alexander conquered territories that had strong bureaucracies with good supplies of food. The Achaemenid empire was one of the best empires of their time with regards to logistics and Alexander was able to adopt that system. This carried on with strong supply trains into India but by the time they reached the latest part of their conquests the supply lines were very tight and not as effective. In fact on the return journey, Alexander had his troops march an absurd route and he lost as many men as he did in the entire campaign in part because of poor supply lines." ]

[ "So for clarification's sake can you specify what you are asking? Do you mean why Sherman went from Atlanta to Savannah then after that stop up the Carolina's? And not say towards Alabama too, or Florida, or keep going after the surrenders of Lee and Johnston? Or why he didn't simply burn and pillage everything before him during the march like the Huns of old?" ]

[ "The Hubble deep field is about 2.5 arc minutes across (there are 60 arc minutes in a degree) which at a distance of one meter would subtend 7 millimeters. That's about the size of a pea." ]

[ "It can. But it varies in relation to the square of the size. So large objects are much more certain relative to their size. But take for example the practical reality of measuring a car’s velocity and position. How would you do that? A speedometer is only as accurate as the gaps between the gears that measure it and it lags behind the car a bit. You’d have to use radar to measure the position of the car and compare that position at one time to the position at another time. That means you could have a precise velocity, but need two time measurements. Which position does that range of time refer to?" ]

[ "Usually when companies are in their infancy or growing rapidly it makes more financial sense to be compensated in stock options. As the company keeps growing those stock options end up being worth millions of dollars or more in some firms. Also for some CEO's choosing this route gives them more motivation to help their company grow, collecting a routine salary for some people can lead to stagnation. Also the tax implications of stock options differ from regular income. Stock options are taxed when they are fulfilled which is a one-time tax in most cases. In the case of Steve Jobs he most likely had \"Incentive Stock Options\" these options have great tax benefits because they are taxed as if it were a capital gain (around 15%). Had Jobs maintained a normal income, he would be taxed every year at the appropriate rate (sometimes as high as 40%)." ]

[ "If you have a stream of foreign currency coming in, and you want to protect it from exchange rate fluctuations, you find someone else who has the opposite concern. If I want to protect a Euro to American Dollars (like an American company with a French subsidiary), I will find a investment bank (they typically broker deals like that). The bank will then look for a company who is concerned about protected an exchange of American into the Euro. The two companies will then broker a deal where they agree to \"swap\" their streams of cash at a predetermines exchange rate. Therefore, if the spot rate (open market exchange rate) goes sour, the companies are protected. And, likewise, if the spot rate becomes very good for one company, they will miss out on the opportunity - a price you give up to protect your cash flow stream. All it really is, is an hedging (or \"insurance\") tool to protect against exchange rate fluctuations...but they can have many other uses." ]

[ "Depends on how you define formal, in diplomatic settings and academic/scientific discussions it was common until French became popular during the Enlightenment When Athanasius Kircher met with Nicholas Calude Fabri de Peirsec in the 1630s they probably spoken to each other in Latin. Source: John Glassie [A Man of Misconceptions:The Life of an Eccentric in an age of Change ](_URL_1_) Also the Irish Pirate Queen [Grace O'Malley](_URL_0_) is believed to have conversed with Queen Elizabeth I in Latin when they met in 1593" ]

[ "Since when is this no longer done? Any serious academic work by a classicist cites the original, not translated material. If translated material is given anywhere it's given in the body of the text and the original quoted in a footnote. One of the most serious criticisms of a classicist's work is that he worked from a translation--Badian scathingly tore apart RLF's book on Alexander for relying on the translations in the Loeb Arrian (of questionable quality), which resulted in a number of serious misreadings of the text." ]

[ "Basically, there are different kinds of hair that grow--and more importantly for our question here--fall out at different rates. Body hair falls out at about the same rate new body hair can grow to the same length to replace it so it tends to stay a \"constant\" length. Hair on the head falls out much slower than body hair, so it can grow much longer. Fur on animals is typically the same as body hair on humans, though some animals--dogs and cats--go through rhythmic periods of hair loss called shedding." ]

[ "It is down to the combination of the genes you get half the genes from your mother and half from your father but those genes are an almost random selection of those genes which go to make up each so can be combined in trillions of different ways. Like saying you get half a pack of cards from one parent and half from another there is no way that if the cards were shuffled before merged that you would get the same cards each time. For more on this and twins - _URL_0_" ]

[ "The human body is very efficient at absorbing nutrients. The microvilli of the small intestine, where nutrient absorption occurs, have a surface area of about 2000-3000 square feet. Your food spends about four to six hours in the small intestine, slowly pushed along by peristaltic contractions. The absorption isn't 100% complete but it is close. Any carbohydrates, proteins, and fats you ingest in excess of what you need will be converted to fat and stored in adipocytes. So it's a bad idea to ingest 10,000 calories in a single meal, or even in a single day." ]

[ "Instead of being packed tightly together, most of your tissues have a little bit of fluid separating cells, so there's a little space there for blood. In addition, some organs are located within a membrane-bound cavity. Either way, blood will follow the path of least resistance and find a place to settle. In certain parts of the body, this isn't a big deal, but in others it can massively interfere with normal organ function. A bruise is a very simple example of this, where blood will just spread out in the tissues underneath the skin, not causing many problems. Your lungs are held in a sac called the pleura, which can become filled with blood and interfere with your breathing. A similar thing can happen with the sac that your abdominal organs are held in. If you start bleeding into your brain, then it will increase the pressure and push the brain against the surrounding skull, possibly causing serious damage." ]

[ "My understanding is that Minute Rice is pre-cooked. Therefore you only need to cook the last minute, or five minutes I believe. Otherwise it's supposed to be the same as regular rice." ]

[ "It won't run as well. Your engine was designed with a specific grade of fuel in mind. If you use a different one, it'll probably impact your gas milage, and with time it might have other effects (mechanics? literal engine engineers?). The words regular, super, and premium are marketing garbage. One isn't necessarily better than the other. It's more like shoe size. You wear a size 10. Is a size 11 better? Same idea for your gas grade." ]

[ "If their skin isn’t kept wet, it causes severe damage to their body. That’s why in rescue videos you see people using hoses, towels, everything they can to keep them soaked with water. Another issue with whales/dolphins is their body weight on land. They’re meant to be in water — so having all that weight on land puts enormous pressure on their organs." ]

[ "Human skeletal muscle contains enough stored energy in the form of various chemicals to operate anaerobically - that is, without air (and more importantly oxygen) - for something like 10 to 30 seconds depending on the person (and I'm sure shorter or longer than that for some people). Once that reserve energy is used up, muscle performance is limited by how much energy (sugar and oxygen for the first few km) your blood can bring to the muscles. Simply put, sprinting uses more energy than can be supplied while sprinting." ]

[ "The law as for whether you can record a phone conversation without telling the other party depends on your jurisdiction, so it might be legal and it might not. In general though, it's not illegal for you to tell someone else what someone told you, since that would be an insanely stupid thing to make illegal." ]

[ "The answer is in the question. \"Parliament\". They're in positions of authority and the peasants can't be given the idea that the same rules apply to them as to their lords." ]

[ "We are the only currently surviving species. It's unlikely in our present state that we will evolve into 2 different species of human. However, if everything does stay how it is now we will eventually evolve so that we couldn't interbreed with someone who you froze today and then thawed out one day in the future. Colonising space could split us into different rarely interbreeding groups that would evolve into many different species. Or we could get smashed by an asteroid and leave us with just a few small isolated populations that would evolve into different species." ]

[ "Actually this probably wouldn't have to take thousands of years, with the way we breed horses. If we were to find a type of horse that was more suitable for us to ride, we would then breed that horse with other horses trying to keep the trait that we like." ]

[ "Read McPherson's [*Battle Cry of Freedom.*](_URL_0_) It's brilliantly written, engaging, authoritative, and generally accepted as \"the book\" for the Civil War in the minds of most historians. You note you're a Tennessee boy. You may be interested in the older \"New South\" school vis-a-vis the War. Wm Dunning led a major push to view the War as one of Northern aggression. [The Dunning School](_URL_1_) was quite influential until (roughly) the early Civil Rights Era. There are also occasional, but lively debates on [H-Net, South](_URL_2_) about how to view the Civil War. As a side note, the whole Oxford History of the US series is worth reading. Some of the titles are dated, but they are all very good reads. (well, at least the ones I've read ;-) )" ]

[ "I agree with i_like_jam's suggestion of *A History of the Arab People,* and MI13's suggestion of Lapidus' work. For the earliest centuries specifically, I would suggest some others: Hugh Kennedy's *The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates* has been a standard teaching tool for Islamic history in the UK since it debuted, and there is a good reason for that. Mark Whittow's *The Making of Orthodox Byzantium* is another great look from the other side, although it talks quite a bit about the Middle East more generally in the period. If you have things you are specifically interested in and would like more suggestions, I am happy to oblige. Just ask." ]

[ "When you let an inkjet printer sit idle for a day or more, the ink that is on the ends of the ink jets tends to dry out and get gunky. When the printer turns back on, it rubs the ink jets against a small sponge to get the gunk off. Also: sometimes, the print head contains a little sensor that says \"I've bumped into the left end of the printer.\" This is called a \"limit switch.\" Sometimes, this little sensor is the *only* way for the printer to know where the print head is. So it *deliberately* bumps the print head into the left end of the machine so that it can be sure of where the print head is." ]

[ "Your body can't dissipate heat as well at 75-80 degrees as it might at 50 degrees, so it needs extra help at dissipating the heat. Even though your temperature is 98 degrees you are ALWAYS creating heat and your body is ALWAYS getting rid of heat. So if the environment makes it take longer to get rid of the same amount of heat, to hold your temperature at 98 degrees your body needs to do extra work to get rid of the heat that isn't dissipating as efficiently as in colder temperatures." ]

[ "Short answer is we’re not. Take a read at this article from 2015: [forbes](_URL_0_) There’s really no short answer for this other than it’s a lie." ]

[ "Most water first has to go thru a treatment plant before it gets to your toilet. If everyone uses too much water, the treatment plant can't keep up with the demand and we end up with a water shortage." ]

[ "Online polls are subjected to a range of a specific audience. When a group of people decide to overwhelm the odds, they automatically break the selective pooling factor and it makes it seem as though they the majority, which is true to an extent. They have the majority for that poll, but not for much else. So when a poll has 5,000 people submit to it, and 4,000 of the answers are from a group dedicated on one specific answer or notion, it's not really the same. Real life polls are manipulated the same way, but it's larger groups. In America we call them \"Parties.\" Online polls are just much much smaller and much easier to manipulate." ]

[ "One thing to point out is the terrain. Iraq is in the populous parts of the country pretty flat, with a semi good road network across the country making it easy to move people around, and larger cities and towns to organize around. Afghanistan is some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth. With little national infrastructure, a smaller population, and some of the highest mountains on earth. Easier to hide, but also harder to travel, let along organize a large movement. _URL_0_" ]

[ "Do you maybe mean light refracting through the atmosphere?" ]

[ "Imagine they take away your chair in kindergarten class. They make you stand there all day and never sit down. Imagine how tired you would be after all day. Not what if you forgot to go home from school and stayed there all night too!!! Well, the muscles holding up your perky little face and eye lids gets tired too, and after a long day, wants some rest. So it droops down a relaxed a bit, but then the blood has a harder time flowing through, and gets all stuck up under your eye for a little while, making it darker" ]

[ "The short answer is no. There are blood groups for animals, but they are not the same as human. Dogs have 13 types, cats 3 [australian vet journal](_URL_1_), and birds have a few. The interesting thing is that it is possible, one time, to make inter-specials transfusions - dog to cat at least - because there are no antibodies to reject the first transfusion. It happens occasionally, [NIH](_URL_0_), and was mentioned on reddit in the past year." ]

[ "It's basically that, in cold climates, \"warm-blooded\" animals can keep on trucking while the \"cold-blooded\" ones are sleepy and slow, or hibernating, or actually dead from the cold. If you put [these guys](_URL_0_) and [these guys](_URL_1_) together on a tropical island, then the jackals are going to have to be careful to stay well out of reach of the dragons. If you put them together in Siberia, then the first time that it gets cold for a few hours, the jackals are going to be running rings around the dragons." ]

[ "If you have a spare afternoon or two I'd check out these two Khan Academy playlists on the [Credit Crisis](_URL_2_) and the [Paulson Bailout](_URL_0_), and if you want to learn more about how banks work check out this [Banking and Money](_URL_1_) playlist as well; there's a few others on finance and credit as well if you want to look for them." ]

[ "Read. Read this subreddit. Read this subreddit's [Popular Questions](_URL_1_). Read some of [this subreddit's recommended books about history](_URL_2_). Read some of [this subreddit's recommended academic resources](_URL_0_). Read. That should keep you occupied for a year or five. And, it'll get you started!" ]

[ "Vaporize? They don't. You can clearly see the bodies after contact. However, the blood is expelled as a loosely compacted liquid which, as liquids do at high velocity, disperses as a mist. Some of the internal organs would go with that, too, as they are very squishy, and squishy things hit by something large and moving fast tend to break into small bits -- especially when compressed quickly by the collapsing bone structure. As for being sent flying... In the first video, the animal falls under either the front or the wheel of the vehicle. In the second, it definitely goes flying. Compare that to [this video of a deer](_URL_0_) -- hoping it's the one I remember because I can't see videos at work. Should be a deer sent flying as it is hit by the front of the vehicle." ]

[ "As you may already know, the countries were not the same shape as they are today. At the time when one species of marsupial was living, it lived when America, and australia/asia were all inter-connected. Then the countries split apart. Most of the mammals in America were killed off by [placental mammals](_URL_0_), where the aussie/asian mammals were isolated, and were able to survive until today. Genetic variation has made a number of mammals, most of which reside in Australasia." ]

[ "Every object radiates energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation through a process called thermal radiation. The intensity and frequency distribution of thermal radiation depends on the temperature of the object: The hotter something is, the more its thermal radiation shifts towards higher frequencies and higher intensity. For objects with a temperature in the range of everyday temperatures, the thermal radiation is primarily in the infrared range. Very hot objects will start to emit radiation in the visible light part of the spectrum (\"glowing hot\"). The Earth emits a lot of thermal radiation out into space and through this remains at an equilibrium with the incoming solar radiation." ]

[ "You body uses most of your calories just to do the basic things it needs to do to stay alive. If you don't get enough thyroid hormones, your body does those things less, you don't burn enough calories, and you become fat, cold, weak and sleepy, even if you're not eating more food. If your body releases too many thyroid hormones, your body burns extra calories and you become thin, twitchy, sweaty and anxious, even if you eat the same or more food. Tl;dr: Calories in, calories out. You thyroid controls how many calories go out." ]

[ "> it doesn’t sound upside down? Sound is composed of compression waves, sort of like pushing and pulling on something. You can pinch her shirt and tug on it to demonstrate that there is no up/down orientation to that kind of movement." ]

[ "Penn & Teller: Bullshit! did a show on this, its very worth a watch, they break it down quite well and understandable. [Link to the full episode](_URL_0_) on youtube. Warning, NSFW language and boobies in like the first 2 seconds, because its Penn & Teller and thats what they do" ]

[ "Most mathematicians and physicists would rather say, \"time is (like) *a* fourth dimension\", not \"time is *the* fourth dimension\". Nobody claims that it's exactly like the familiar three space dimensions; it obviously is not. There's nothing preventing us from studying geometry with four, five, or more *spatial* dimensions, which is what mathematicians typically do. Sometimes time is treated formally as a fourth spatial dimension, but it is still treated differently from the others, in what's called a Minkowski space." ]

[ "\"4th cousin\" relates to how many generations back you have to go to have a common ancestor. 1st cousins share a grandparent. 2nd cousins share a great-grandparent. 3rd cousins share a great-great-grandparent. And 4th cousins share a great-great-great-grandparent. \"Twice removed\" refers to the fact that the two cousins are not from the same generation. 4th cousins once removed means that the parent of one cousin is the fourth cousin of the other. And 4th cousins twice removed means that the grandparent of one cousin is the fourth cousin of the other. So my 4th cousin twice removed is my great-great-great-grandparent's great-great-great-great-great-grandchild. Or perhaps they are my great-great-great-great-great-grandparent's great-great-great-grandchild. A picture tells a thousand words, and there are some good diagrams on the [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) page." ]

[ "Yes, the material does affect the scattering pattern. X-rays scatter off of electrons, so the electron density of the object determines how the x-rays scatter. This is a very important technique for solving atomic scale structures of complex molecules, especially when you can get those molecules to form a crystal. In a crystalline array, x-rays will scatter in distinct diffraction peaks. This isn't quite as useful as an image (it isn't easy to make lenses that work well for x-rays) but the scattering pattern can still be used to solve the electron density in the crystal. [This diagram](_URL_0_) gives you an idea of how it works. X-ray crystallography allowed Watson and Crick to solve the structure of DNA in the 1950's." ]

[ "> If a proton beam is fired at a target of lithium or tungsten and neutrons are produced, where did the neutrons come from? They came from spallation reactions. > What happens to the protons and the target's atoms? [Here](_URL_0_) is a document with some nice figures, explaining spallation, and contrasting it with high-energy fission. Basically, spallation is when a nucleus is completely shattered to pieces by a fast, light particle." ]

[ "Only Saturn's north pole has a hexagon, but we're not 100% sure what causes it. It seems to be a result of a sharp change in the wind speed as a function of latitude. [Experiments](_URL_0_) have shown that a similar shape can be created in a fluid tank where the center rotates faster than the edge: [several vortices form](_URL_1_) spaced evenly so the border between the fast polar region and the slow equatorial region is hexagonal." ]

[ "They start out as a giant blob of gasses and space dust, Sort of like pizza Dough. As they continue to spin they flatten once again like pizza dough." ]

[ "Table VII Law VIII > If anyone knowingly and maliciously kills a freeman, he shall be guilty of a capital crime. If he kills him by accident, without malice and unintentionally, let him substitute a ram to be sacrificed publicly by way of expiation for the homicide of the deceased, and for the purpose of appeasing the children of the latter. _URL_0_ I have no idea how that looks in latin. Generally one thing that changed later on was adding punishments for killing slaves, In the early years it was treated as a property crime." ]

[ "This is a really broad question that covers a huge geographical area and thousands of years of history. Also, *Mesopotamian* is a general category that includes Assyrian (and Sumerian, Babylonian, Persian, and a bunch of others.) Maybe you could narrow it down a bit--is there a specific issue you're interested in? A certain century or dynasty? A particular legal code you've heard about? Something more specific would help you get an answer to this question." ]

[ "High-cycle metal fatigue. Collisions between a new bat and the ball are mostly elastic and lose little energy, transferring most of the kinetic energy of the bat into the ball. Over repeated collisions, the metal fatigues and the collisions become increasingly plastic, losing more and more of the kinetic energy into plastic deformation of the bat. Most aluminum alloys lack a fatigue limit and will eventually fracture even under weak repeated stress." ]

[ "Banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System regularly deposit their cash in the regional Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve Banks can exchange notes that shouldn't be recirculated for new ones. The Federal Reserve Board has the authority to order from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (part of the Department of the Treasury), and each year estimates how much will be needed. The damaged bills are destroyed. So for the typical person, if you have a damaged bill, all you need to do is go to your bank to exchange it. It will make its way to the Federal Reserve eventually. It's harder if you have a severely mutilated bill, like if you have less than half. Then you've got to get the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to examine it to see whether you can get it exchanged for a new bill. Usually people don't bother with that unless a large amount of money is involved." ]

[ "They don't count the air when they calculate the weight. However, in air, the air comes in and fills almost the entire volume like water in a sponge. So the total weight in the volume is air + weight of aerogel which is more than the weight of air. There has never been a lighter-than-air structure which holds a hard vacuum." ]

[ "This is pretty much how we preserve food (think about packaged cakes which last for months on the shelf). The bread would dry out very quickly in vacuo as the water would evaporate and be pumped out by the vacuum pump. This is why twinkles and the like are packaged with argon or nitrogen gas. The proteins in the bread would still crystallise and make the bread stale. This is why the chorleywood process was invented: essentially you make very soft bread with a load of lard in it to stop it going off so quickly (and also why homebaked cakes last a lot longer than homemade bread, as they're full of butter). So in answer to the essence of your question: yes, but a lot more slowly." ]

[ "No. This is one of the great unsolved problems of theoretical physics, called the hierarchy problem. People have different theories for explaining it, like supersymmetry, large extra dimensions, brane-world scenarios and so on, but none of these are truly convincing and there is no experimental evidence for any of them. So it is still a mystery, really. People hoped that the LHC would find something, like supersymmetry, or even extra dimensions, which would then help us understand it, but so far no luck." ]

[ "\"Sticking to things\" does not require energy. A piece of tape can do the same thing, and you don't need to plug that into the wall. Similarly, holding things up does not require energy. Your arms might get tired holding up a heavy object for an extended period of time, but a table can do it without getting tired. Energy (or work) is equal to force * distance. So in order for a magnet to do work, you need it to apply a force over a certain distance." ]

[ "What aspect of the gas molecules do you want to simulate? Getting the electronic structure of just one molecule can take an inordinate amount of time, even neglecting how it interacts with the others. One mole of gas is a ludicrous number to simulate, even if you treat them as perfectly spherical elastic balls. Also, if you have 1 mole of gas molecules, you clearly don't have a vacuum anymore." ]

[ "We are used to seeing smoke rise up, because it is carried by convection currents. In microgravity, there would still be air currents but no set direction for the smoke to go. If the air is very still it might make a spherical cloud around the source, just like [flames on the ISS](_URL_0_)." ]

[ "Country specific ones follow the laws of that country. You can search for Tibet freedom on _URL_0_. but not _URL_1_ or Google.can Google was given a choice by Chinese gov. Either you make the search engine follow our rules, or you don't do business in China at all and China blocks _URL_2_ entirely" ]

[ "US states can't deny the validity of legal documents in other states. So if I own some property in Texas, and I bring that up as evidence in an Oklahoma court case, the court can't decide it doesn't count because it's from the wrong state." ]

[ "Children have some \"advantages\" over adult soldiers. They're a lot easier to indoctrinate. Children generally lack more developed feelings of empathy. Once you get them killing they don't really seem to have a problem with it. Allied soldiers during WW2 said that the worst units to get captured by were the Hitler Youth ones since they seemed to have less problem with torturing and killing prisoners." ]

[ "Becaus for most if them their frontal lobes aren’t developed yet and are very easily molded by repetition and hype. Adults have the ability and experience to see the BS in ads." ]

[ "you make air hotter and wetter. Yes you, you stinky human. You're sweating. you're producing heat. These things move from you to the air. But they move slower, the closer you are to the heat and moisture of the air. Heat and moisture transmit more readily to the air the greater the difference. So the advantage of the fan, is it takes the hot wet air you've gone and contributed to, and moves it away. Instead you're left with new, cooler, dryer air. And so your body can move heat and wetness to it faster. Thus cooling you." ]

[ "It's depends on how air tight the room is. You will notice this with doors that are tighter to the carpet and not under cut. Take a door that you can't slam because of this and open a window in that room the air will be forced out the window and the door will close easier. Opening or closing a door rapidly will generate lots of air movement. Without somewhere to go it will be more difficult to close. Undercut doors allow air underneath. Similar to Windows letting air outside. Also to note in commercial buildings many glasses enclosed rooms and others have what's called transfer air duct that as well as allowing air out functionally assist in the same way. Source union sheet metal worker. Duct work." ]

[ "Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen. If you run an electrical current through water it will separate into its component parts." ]

[ "A good example of this is in plastic grocery bags, which are made of low-density polyethylene (LDPE). Normally, LDPE has a very low crystallinity; the polymer chains aren't aligned in any particular manner. However, when you start to tear/stretch the plastic, you're sort of pulling some of the chains into alignment. This results in some crystal formation, with two effects: a) the LDPE turns increasingly opaque, since light scatters more at crystal boundaries, and b) the LDPE becomes harder to tear, because crystals are usually stronger than amorphous material." ]

[ "The hippocampus gets overloaded with serotonin, causing an immunogenic cascade reaction which activates numerous platelet factors. Consequently, the SPF-15 receptors are then filled which will send a signal (complex) causing the leptin hormone to inactivate. This will remove the feeling of hunger. These events in succession cause adenosine receptors to bind (we aren’t sure why) which slows the brain waves, thereby inducing sleep. I have engaged in heavy research and experimentation concerning this very question. Feel free to PM me if there are any follow-up questions" ]

[ "I've read that what seem to be long periods of sleep, like sleeping all night, are actually multiple shorter sleeps with brief intervals of being awake. But when you are only briefly awake, it fails to register in your long-term memory, so when you wake up in the morning, the last thing you can remember is some time from just before you fell asleep. So my theory with the car thing is that you probably woke up multiple times during the trip, but if you found yourself in some unremarkable location that wasn't close to your destination, you just drifted back to sleep and don't remember it. Then when you do wake up and notice you're close to where you want to go, that prompts you to stay awake. I think a similar thing happens when I wake up just before my alarm is set to go off. Probably I've already woken up multiple times before that, but I have no memory of those, so it seems like I just fell asleep the previous night and woke up right before the alarm." ]

[ "There's been an EU directive requiring those warnings since 2011. It may be that you've been visiting a lot more European sites lately. You're right, almost every website (especially every website with some sort of log in system) uses cookies." ]

[ "It's just the current popular style. Flat simple forms are the current \"in \" look, so that's what companies are adopting to seem more relevant. In 5-10 years, odds are good some other basic design trait will be the new fad." ]

[ "[Check out Brian Dunning's article on the issue](_URL_0_) if you haven't already. I'd also love to hear more about this." ]

[ "Imagine you wanted to send a digital file to a friend of yours, but all you have is a telephone and the binary data contents of the file. You tell your friend \"when I say beep you write down 1, when I say boop, you write down 0\", and then you read the contents of the file to him over the phone \"beep beep boop boop beep boop beep boop boop boop beep\" etc etc. It takes _weeks_ to do, but it works. So you invent a little box that can say the beeps and boops faster than your mouth can say them, and give your friend a little box that can hear the beeps and boops and write them down very fast. This works pretty well, and you realize you can make it go so fast that the beeps and boops happen very very quickly, so quickly that to your human ear it just sounds like hissing." ]

[ "America is one of the few nations whose population is almost entirely people (or offspring of such people) who felt strongly enough that America was such a good idea they traveled half way around the world giving up any relationships and status their ancestors had accumulated to travel to the new nation. So, almost all American's have a strongly held belief that the nation is special, and one of the primary ways to express that belief is by flying the nation's flag." ]

[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]

[ "Nothing atm. They will devise a national plan to make it easier for rural areas to get better speeds then satellite and dsl. And prolly subsidize it somehow for the poor (similar what they do with phone)" ]

[ "You know how companies sometimes have multiple routers that they make that have different speeds and prices? A lot of the times, the cheaper ones are basically the same as the more expensive ones, but artificially slowed either through a simple wire connection somewhere, or through firmware. They wanted to make it illegal for people to hack their routers to be faster. That's moot though, the main point here is that it shouldn't be illegal for you to modify things you own." ]

[ "The film the MPAA reviews often is not completely finished. MPAA rating can be time consuming, so they send the movie early and finish up special effects and such, or even added scenes." ]

[ "DVDs covers (and especially Bru-Ray discs) are rather small and are meant to be sold on a shelf. So design choices made for a film's large theatrical poster sometimes won't work when shrunk down to just 7 inches. A new design must be created for home release. Sometimes, these are done by the original artist or another professional designer. Other times, it's anyone who can get the job done the cheapest and fastest." ]

[ "Dogs are pack animals and they crave contact with pack members. If they are domesticated humans, in particular their owners, are their pack." ]

[ "Because you're a good boy, yes you are! who's a good boy?" ]

[ "It’s a buildup of salts and minerals in a kidney that (when not built up) is flushed out of the body with urine. They form due to concentrated urine, which is what allows the minerals to stick together and harden. The reason they cause so much pain is because while they’re called “stones”, which might make you think of something like a smooth pebble, it’s really a sharp crystal that scratches the sides of the urinary tract. tl;dr- it’s a crystal that forms in the kidneys that decides that it hates you and your body so it’s going to tear you apart" ]

[ "Before I get all high & mighty about the term \"Dark Ages,\" can you define what you mean for us?" ]

[ "There is no direction \"perfectly away\" from the singularity in a black hole. Every path starting from inside the event horizon leads towards the singularity due to the curvature of space-time. > Will the photon come to a literal stop for a brief moment while it decelerates and then begins accelerating at the center? Photons can neither accelerate nor decelerate, they always move at the speed of light." ]

[ "If you imagine producing a dark matter particle at the LHC, just think about what would happen to it. The whole point of dark matter is that it interacts very very weakly with normal matter, so the particle would fly right out of the detector and we'd never see it. This shows up in the data analysis as missing energy, and is the telltale sign of such a dark matter particle. With Re: to mirror energy, I have no idea what you're talking about. Such concepts as 'mirror forces' or 'mirror gravity' need a precise definition, and none exists in the scientific community." ]

[ "I'm no expert but this might go some way to explain it [Mythbusters and Nvdia](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "You have a bunch of satellites in space, sending signals that say, \"My clocks says 5:00:00.123\", \"My clock says 5:00:00.124\", over and over again. Your GPS measures the differences it takes for the signals to reach it. If it receives one second a thousandth of a second sooner, it knows that satellite is about 300 km closer. With information from 3 or 4 satellites, and knowledge of where in their orbits they are suppose to be, it can calculate its position. Since light travels so fast, it needs a good clocks to make the calculations." ]

[ "* [Wikipedia: Road Statistics](_URL_0_) * [Wikipedia: List of countries by road network size](_URL_1_) * [CIA World Factbook: Roadways](_URL_2_) The last site is source for Wikipedia and has a data download link you can use to get the data into a spreadsheet. Edit: I've just imported the raw data myself and the sum of the road lengths is 33,503,102 km (20.82 million miles). Which, according to [Wolfram|Alpha](_URL_3_), is 24 times the diameter of the Sun, or a quarter of the mean distance between the Earth and Sun. Interesting to see that it would take a photon 1.9 minutes to travel the equivalent distance in a vacuum, assuming traffic lights are all green." ]

[ "[This map](_URL_0_) is a plot of all ocean voyages contained in millions of entries contained in the Maury collection, a collection of ship logbook entries chronicling global shipping (and weather data) from 1792 to 1910, currently in the possession of NOAA National Climatic Data Center. The entire collection was digitized in 1998. For comparison purposes, [today's global shipping plot.](_URL_2_) Edited to add sources: _URL_3_ _URL_1_" ]

[ "VL can go right through glass, but IR can't. It all has to do with electron energy levels. If the material doesn't have electrons with energy gaps that match the energy of that type radiation, the material will be transparent to that type." ]

[ "I had to consult his Nobel prize lecture to get some of the experimental details. It is well worth a read. _URL_0_ Lenard seems to have worked with electrons with energies around 30 keV (that is, accelerated by 30000 volts). Electrons of these energies will be fairly efficiently absorbed by materials on a length scale of around 100-1000 nm, so the challenge is to find window materials that can be formed into thin sheets. Metal leaf was the simplest choice at that time. He found that metal leaf of low density (aluminium) was more permeable to cathode rays than that of high density (gold) for the same thickness (page 112). Gold can be beaten into thinner leaf than aluminium, but perhaps thin gold leaf lacked the mechanical strength needed for a window between vacuum and air." ]

[ "The French expected the attack to fall through Luxembourg and Northern France, the southern Ardennes region. Had the Germans concentrated on the Franco-German border, as the French expected, their army would have hit the French right where they expected, and would have been vulnerable to the French counterattacks in the Vosges. The German plan, as far as Belgium was concerned, worked fine. The Belgians were crippled and their fortresses at Liege were quickly battered down (lets dispel the myth that Liege put the Germans behind. If they didnt expect Liege to resist, those big 420mm siege howitzers could have been better used in other sectors.). The French, completely unsuspecting the German attack through Belgium, were taken by perfect surprise. The Germans ultimately fail on the Marne, but it is not because of the invasion of Belgium." ]

[ "I am no expert in this period, but here are a couple of thoughts. 1. With regards to Ireland: It's an island. That has certain strategic advantages. Wales, on the other hand, not only has borders on land, but is also really close to central England, making it potentially easier to more effectively invade (as England did successfully in the 12th century). 2. With regards to Scotland and Wales, it's worth noting that while Scotland had a centuries-long history as a united kingdom, Wales was used to being in divided kingdoms, and had only recently been united (by Llewellyn the Great). After his death, Wales again fell into smaller kingdoms which were at war with each other. Scotland was having trouble figuring out its line of succession at the time of the invasion by Edward I, but it was building on a much greater sense of unity than Wales. Sources: wikipedia [1](_URL_2_) [2](_URL_0_) [3](_URL_1_) and also Sharon Kay Penman's books on the conquest of Wales." ]

[ "Say you have a hammer and nail. If the hammer head is bigger than the nail, then the force of the hammer is distributed evenly against the head of the nail. The nail will go straight into the wood. Now say you have a hammer and a nail, but the nail head is bigger than the hammer. When you hit the hammer against the nail head, it's likely to be slightly off center. This will cause more force on one side, and the nail will go into the wood at a slight angle. So the bigger the surface area of the hammer head in relation to the nail head, the more likely the nail is to go into the wood straight. This isn't as big a deal if you hit the nail dead center each time, but it's hard to do that. People tend to be slightly off with their aim when swinging a hammer, and even reliable machines have tolerances where they are slightly off. Now just substitute the hammer for the locking mechanism in a gun, and replace nail with bullet, and you'll get why increased surface area on the locking mechanism increases accuracy." ]

[ "As far as I know, it's not an actual better encryption, its the fact that Apple is not holding on to the key. So before the NSA could just secret court Apple and get your info. Now they can't do that because Apple literally doesn't have it." ]

[ "Sounds are vibrations in air. Low pitched sounds are slower vibrations while higher pitched sounds are faster vibrations. Moving a zipper faster pulls it past the teeth faster and produces faster vibrations, thus a higher pitched sound." ]

[ "I'm only speculating but it could be Pavlovian response. You've probably heard of Pavlov's dog where the scientist would ring a bell and then give the dog some food, repeat, repeat, repeat. Eventually the dog would associate the bell with food and begin salivating at the sound of the bell, whether there was any food there or not. When you pee there is the sound of liquid hitting liquid, you've been doing it for a long time, you have probably come to associate the two even if only subconsciously." ]

[ "The V in your equation is the volts that are dropped across the line, not the voltage on the line. So, if you put in 100000 volts at one end and get out 99999 on the other, you've only dropped a volt and you aren't generating much heat. I don't know the actual numbers, but I do know that for a given resistance of a line and a given transmitted power, you lose less energy (and thus generate less heat) if your voltage is higher compared to if it is lower. EDIT: I should add that that's the whole reason we have high voltage power lines, and also the reason that AC is used for power transmission- because it's much easier to step up and step down AC power compared to DC power. Edison originally tried to push DC for general usage, but couldn't produce large DC networks due to transmission losses." ]

[ "In short, the time the lightening is touching the person is too short to fry them completely. It is also focused on one relatively small area on the body, so any collateral damage would be minimal." ]

[ "You might be interested in this famous paper by Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner: [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences](_URL_1_)" ]

[ "When you take any medication, someone has to have calculated how long the drug lasts at each dosage level. They have determined the correct dose for each body weight. They know how that medication is affected by other drugs, including how the duration or decay rate changes. To do these types of calculations, scientists and pharmacists use computers... But they used to use calculus." ]

[ "They run it through a machine (algorithm) that scrambles text into an unrecognizable pattern. This machine is special. It can’t unscramble, it always scrambles things the same way, and it will never scramble different text into the same pattern. So, they run your password through the machine and hold onto the pattern. You log in, they scramble what you typed in, and if those scrambles match the scrambled pattern they held onto, then you’re in." ]

[ "They don't. It's a marketing ~~lie~~ gimmick. I used to work for a company that did a similar thing by mail. New customers were supposed to sign up by a certain time for special rates but as a specific matter of policy we'd give those rates to *anyone* who mailed back the special offer." ]

[ "If I can tack on to this, same question but for the sensation of needing to urinate/defecate." ]

[ "Kind of like if you're looking through some legos for a number of different parts, you usually come across one that you need so your search goes quickly until there's one last part you need. It might take you awhile to find that last specific part. That explanation is probably wrong but that's what I would say to a five year old." ]

[ "Water is the solvent in which biochemical reactions occur. Total body water in liters for men and women is 60% and 55%, respectively, of the body weight in kilograms. It's not that there's some amount of pure water hanging around. The water molecules are *in* the skin, organs, and even bones." ]

[ "You can, your brain is just really good at ignoring it, just like your nose is always in your vision but it never bothers you because your mind is used to it and doesn't see it as important information." ]

[ "They're nebulae (which is Latin for \"clouds\", as it happens) and like most everything in the universe, they're made of hydrogen and helium with a smattering of other elements. The darker, gray and orange parts of that image are mostly molecular gas with a bit of dust, which is very effective at blocking light. These molecular clouds are the environments in which stars form. Dense clumps of gas attract more and more gas, which gradually increases the pressure and temperature within the protostar. Eventually the protostellar clumps will reach the temperature range where they can maintain fusion in their cores, and they'll start the process of blowing away their gas envelope. Most star-forming regions have both cold, dense, opaque molecular clouds as well as regions where young, bright blue stars have heated up and ionized the gas, making it lower density and transparent. Without knowing the particular wavelengths that this image is taken in, it's hard to say much specific about it." ]

[ "Since the question has already been answered, I'm just going to throw in a plug for my favourite app for answering these kinds of questions, [Google Sky Map](_URL_0_). Just point it at whatever is confusing you, and it tells you what and where everything is." ]

[ "When a person is infected by the rabies virus, it is usually through a bite to an extremity like a hand or foot. The rabies viruses spreads throughout the body through your nerve cells, meaning that it takes a relatively long time (days, weeks, even months) for the virus to spread from the initial point of infection to your brain (where it causes the worst damage). The slow spread of the virus to the brain gives your body ample time to mount an effective immune response from vaccination, even if the vaccine was given after the initial infection event." ]

[ "why would you eat your mentor? but the reaction will cause you to vomit uncontrollably sort of like putting baking soda in vinegar." ]