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NomaDamas 4

4ffhgi

why are some people are more prone to insect bites?

I don't know about other bugs but mosquitoes have a preference for type O blood. CO2 also attracts them, and pregnant women exhale more CO2. Also alcohol (as little as 12 ounces of beer) seems to increase their attraction to you; possibly because it raises your body temperature.

d2053909-d8d3-4b72-8311-9f8d99b3eadd

2dj60j

Why are timeshares considered a scam?

You basically "Own" a part of a property and you only get to use it a few weeks a year, yet you pay property taxes, upkeep costs and "Association Dues" year round. Most people don't want to spend all their vacations at the same place every year, but if you have a time-share, you're wasting money if you don't use it.

a8672780-b186-4074-bef9-7fd8ccb4af39

2h2uzx

What would happen if there was absolutely no US involvement (i.e. provision of weapons, logistics, drones, etc) in the Middle East?

the IS would take over. creating a bigger "nation" that's hostile towards US relations. puts israel and our trade partners in the middle east at risk. a middle of the road country is open to trade as long as such a trade agreement does't cause problems with its neighbor. if ISIS is their neighbor, they're less open to agreeing to trade with the enemy of ISIS.

e6d02777-d64e-439f-b050-374dcb889da6

7o53va

What does the "strength" of an earthquake acutally mean?

As you may know, an earthquake occurs when two slabs of rock move relative to one another over a surface called a "fault". Moment magnitude is simply the product of the area of the fault ruptured, the relative movement across the fault, and the stiffness of the rock (called the shear modulus). It is closely related to the energy released in the earthquake, but the relation is not trivial. The moment magnitude does not take into account any other factors, so ignores the depth, duration, size of area affected, and so on. The moment magnitude is an important quantity in academia because it is directly related to the fault rupture itself. However, it is not of huge benefit for working out impacts because other parameters like proximity to population centres, building quality, depth and surface geology (the waves that cause the damage are surface waves that only represent a tiny fraction of the total earthquake energy, and these waves can be amplified or suppressed depending on the geology at the surface) are a lot more important than the moment magnitude. You may be interested in the USGS's [PAGER program](_URL_0_) which tries to take these factors into account to estimate the economic and humanitarian impact of earthquakes when they happen.

30c51c63-3554-401f-b063-17c2122bf42e

1u3mkc

How does the air-pressure sensor in rotating car tires report the pressure to the stationary chassis?

There are direct and indirect systems. Direct systems have some sort of sensor in the tires that measure the air pressure, and use wireless communications to feed that data to the car's computer. Indirect systems don't measure the pressure directly, but sensors on the rest of the car (like the suspension system) measure different variables on how the car is riding, and then a computer on the car tries to interpolate tire pressure. Generally the car has to be driven for a little while (on what are assumed to be properly inflated tires) and it creates a sort of baseline profile of how the car rides. Over time, if the sensors measure significant changes from that baseline, then that's a clue that something might be up with the tires. Direct systems are much more accurate, but require sensors (with a power source (battery)) to be located in each tire, which can be a significant maintenance issue. The indirect systems can't give you an actual measurement of pressure in each tire, but can usually detect when a tire gets low enough to be a serious issue.

5d08aaca-0a11-42c3-aafe-ab28eefcb311

5gtabn

the Hypergraph

A hypergraph is a collection of nodes and edges as a standard graph is, but this time, the edges don't have to be between just two nodes. Edges in a hypergraph can contain an arbitrary number of nodes. That is all that is going on. While hypergraphs can be useful in theory, in practice I'm not aware of anyone actually using them. You can turn a hypergraph into a graph pretty easily by just replacing each hyperedge with a clique, and now you've got something that is easy to perform typical algorithms on.

867f0c32-02f4-4403-999c-08c4a5128f50

rvebu

Explain to me how stocks work, what makes the price go up/down?

Also, you can think about companies like cows, and buying stock like buying part of a cow (and buying part not in the sense of the tail of the hooves, but owning a certain portion of the money the cow generates). The cow can make you money in two ways: 1) Whenever the cow is milked the owners of the cow can give you some of the money they get by selling the milk (this money is called dividends). alternatively, the rancher can choose to use some, or even all, of that money to improve the value of the cow, maybe by feeding the cow better food or having a veterinarian give it a check up (retained earnings). You may be okay with not getting even of the milk money if you trust the rancher to use that money wisely to increase the value of the cow (Apple's cow is worth a TON of money despite the fact that, until recently, they never paid out any of their milk money to investors). 2) At some point the cow can be sold (the company can be bought out) and you will be payed based on what percentage of the cow you own. Even if the whole cow is not sold, you can sell your portion of the cow to someone else if you want. The value of the cow, and therefore your portion of the cow is decided by a couple things. First, the basic attributes of the cow are important. Is it a healthy cow? Does it produce a lot of milk? Does it produce good milk that people like to drink? Is it likely to grow in the future? How does it compare to other cows that are similar to it? These kind of things are the cow's (or company's) fundamentals. In a perfect world, the price of the cow would perfectly reflect everything that you, or anyone else knows about the cow. Second, what people think about your cow, and cows in general affects the price of the cow. Is there a mad cow scare brewing? Is veganism in fashion? Or on the positive end maybe you're expecting a hot summer where a lot more people than usual will want to barbeque hamburgers, or maybe you know of a new beef-based diet that you think will become all the rage and expect the value of your cow to increase. These kinds of things are the "behavioral" aspects of the price of your cow (or stock) and are important too, but much harder to see or measure.

b5f65e04-828a-464d-8a16-8c44db34d8b8

4yjrm5

Where do bugs go in the winter time?

Depends on the species. 1. They hibernate - like lady bugs in the leaf litter, or female queen bumblebees in the soil. 2. They migrate south - like monarch butterflies 3. The adults die, but leave their eggs/larvae in a safe space to "hibernate" over winter and their offspring hatch/emerge in the spring - like crickets 4. A small number carry on as usual even in the very cold - like mites and spiders

9db78805-381f-447d-adaf-23aba243db91

xruip

Mars Time

Mars spins slightly slower than the earth. A day on Mars is called a *Sol* and lasts 1^d 0^h 37^m 22.663^s , [NASA adjusts their timekeeping accordingly](_URL_0_).

557dd090-44a8-4317-81f2-bf681a9d4424

13lwcu

or[5] Electronic Tablets/E-books.

Sounds like you should look at the [Nexus 7.](_URL_1_) Good size for portability, amazing price and three different storage capacities (8GB, 16GB, 32GB), lots of free apps, and it starts at $199. There are plans for an even cheaper $100 8GB version in the future, but that is unconfirmed for now. If that's too small, maybe look at the [Nexus 10.](_URL_0_)

f508fa60-18ba-4c1b-9eb3-6ae5def81ff9

1q5g9c

How does an electron microscope work and can it be used on living tissue?

An electron microscope works by passing electrons across the object that it's scanning. Basically, the object is coated with a heavy metal, and the electrons that bounce off get recorded, and it gets put into a computerized image that gets manually colored for effect. Electron microscopes require the object to be placed in a vaccuum, so no, it cannot be used on living objects. Source: Bio student

bc2d7105-c171-48b3-8a49-340570e8f063

z1ug9

What's so bad about Detroit?

Poverty Jobs left the city at an ever accelerating pace over the past few years and this has led to lower and lower incomes and, consequently, higher crime and lower property values. As it gets worse fewer companies would think of moving in and bringing back jobs and the situation worsens and worsens. Their economy was heavily reliant on manufacturing and that is the way of the past for this country as factories move to the employer friendly south.

e4c4762b-4fe8-452e-9a68-88cafc871f27

4s3w62

Why can't multi-billion dollar companies have less profit and pay their employees more without wrecking the economy.

they could. but what would be the benefit to the owners of the company by having less profit? what would be the benefit to shareholders who are looking for the company to maximize profits?

772eaed5-481b-4d92-9a78-5a977fd3f66c

3nicg3

Why do animals eyes light up in certain colours when shone at with a torch/light?

Many especialy night active animals have a layer of reflective tissue behind the light sensing cells at the back of the eye. That allows them to caputer more light in their light sensing cells. Additionaly that makes the eyes act as a retroreflector (meaning they will reflect light back paralell to the incomming light) like in the bottom image here: _URL_0_ . The color comes from the tissue that surrounds the lightsensing cells absorbing some of the light.

7623b28a-3b4c-4bf0-96ec-b6dd7e645b86

7s1d1v

What causes a stye or an Internal stye?

It is usually caused by a staph infection, and can be treated by putting a warm compress on it around four times a day and just leaving it alone. Let it resolve on its own and just take painkillers, or if it is very painful seek medical care.

1204eacb-5dca-475d-83f8-efa5335c2e2e

2m6u1d

How come we can land probes on comets and send satellites around the galaxy, but we can't put a high resolution color camera on these devices?

We could now. But this probe was launched 10 years ago, and was designed and built mostly during the 90s.

8f58f157-d5a1-4fcc-b658-5b26dfe69c8c

3b3w9n

Why some credit card transactions require a billing address and some only require a zipcode?

CVV codes are not mandatory, it is up to the person/company as to whether or not they want to require it or not. In some cases their Merchant provider will offer cheaper rates on transaction when CVV is used, as it leads to less fraud however some retailers choose not to do that. Many merchants still refuse to include a security code field in their online checkout forms, because they believe that doing so may confuse some of their customers or otherwise put them off and lead to lost sales. It's also a violation of PCI compliance to store CVV numbers, which helps reduce fraud but since the CVV can't be stored it means that the buyer has to have their card with them at time of purchase (again that is good in terms of anti-fraud), but some companies do believe that can hurt sales.

024f119b-916b-496a-8354-9387c479a7e0

3k69xz

How do gradients work in tatoos

Hi there i tattoo and its exactly how they said. The needles dont need to penetrate too deep and the more times you go over it the darker it becomes you want to go from lightest to dark. You cant take dark back. We water down the black in different amounts or whatever colors and just like water color painting we blend in the shading/colors. White is not the proper way to do a greyscale tattoo. White is meant for accenting and highlighting. Multiple needles at different sizes are also key to this process with the right amount of voltage and speed, and plenty of lubrication for the skin to not be damaged.

b1059ef7-3ff3-4253-bf63-859fef731032

jsq38

How did the russian revolution start?

The Russian Revolution is actually two revolutions, the February revolution and the October revolution (Stalin, btw, was involved in neither). During World War 1, in February 1917, a bunch of workers in Russia started a strike, and basically everybody ended up joining it, including the army and eventually some key figures of the Czar's government. They forced the Czar to step down and give power to the Provisional Government, that was supposed to organize free elections, but ended up being removed from power in November by a group of Bolsheviks, lead by Lenin and Trotsky. The basic reasons were that the Russians were losing WW1, and that there was a lot of poverty and hunger. Also, the Czar was very unpopular because he taxed heavily and was very dictatorial. It turned out that the Provisional Government really didn't do that much better, so that gave Lenin the chance he took to get some support for this second revolution.

6bf3f7b9-7a2b-4da1-8b98-130d9c3a118e

4u080s

How do the water intake on this nuclear plant work? And how this guy managed to go from the inlet to the outlet without a scratch?

Nuclear engineer here. He was sucked from he ocean to the intake bay. At the far end of the intake bay is where the pumps push water through the plant. The intake bay water level is at a slightly lower elevation than the ocean, which created the pressure that sucked him through. He didn't pass through any pumps or the plant, just an intake pump to the bay.

4d5c72fa-6f54-428d-93be-5fbba35796de

4aqp1f

How do the mammals of the ocean hydrate themselves.

They have awesome kidneys. The kidneys are able to filter the water to hydrate the body and remove the salt. Human kidneys are not so awesome.

9ef0f9fd-6a33-4ea7-892b-d1a0ab91493b

24rku9

"PTSD is a cultural product" what does that mean?

If I understand this correctly, what its saying is that PTSD only exists as a recognised disorder because of the ability we have to study it. It never used to be recognised. In wars, for example, people would get it and be labelled as cowards, because it wasn't understood what the sufferers were going through. I think its similar to our modern day view of depression. Maybe back in the day, depressed people were seen as someone who just needs to harden up, a bit of a downer all the time. Now, though, we realise its a proper disorder that the patient can't control, as opposed to a voluntary sadness. In the same way, now that we have studying PTSD and its effects, we can recognise it as a disorder, not just someone being anxious and touchy and aggressive.

fe0f779e-ddb5-4466-8f84-790e0e07f5b7

4t440r

Why can most things in the body be transplanted, except the eyes?

Whole eyes are really tricky to transplant for a few reasons: 1. The retina dies in only 2-4 hours without a blood supply. The donor and recipient would have to be right by each other. 2. The retina is part of the brain, so if a donor is brain dead, the eye would be dead too. You have to harvest the eye right after the donor's heart stops. 3. You have to connect the optic nerve, which has 1.3 million individual nerves that need to link up. 4. You need to suppress the immune system so it doesn't recognize the new eye as a foreign and attack it. (Although this isn't as bad as for other organs since the eye is generally protected from the immune system.) Actually this stuff isn't that far off. Researchers have already transplanted eyes in mice who survived for 200 days. But they aren't sure how much vision those mice had restored. Still, even 30% vision restored gives people independence and is better than complete blindness.

353df451-1a02-4b96-8c2f-2e4c5e08a697

3r8to5

Weird vibrating eye "trick"

it's called nystagmus. It can appear as a problem for some people, in which it is uncontrolled, but some people are able to do it voluntarily. Other than the obvious vision problems for people who have involuntary nystagmus and can't 'switch it off', I'm not aware of it being a cause of any sort of damage.

913818a5-044b-47bd-8f05-07a40f562250

3h4kl7

Why are some words considered more offensive/rude than others, despite meaning a very similar or even the exact same thing? I'm referring to swear words mainly.

Similar question has been asked more than once today. It's weird. All languages have curse or swear words; words used to describe acts, ideas, or concepts that are considered taboo by the culture that uses said language. These can vary widely from culture to culture, of course, but the common taboos in western civilization are (as I'm sure you're aware) sex-related. In English, at least, the idea of "poor" or "bad" language also comes in part from how the language as we know it today developed during the middle ages. In the simplest terms, the common people spoke a different dialect than the Norman French nobility, and the so-called "vulgar" (literally "common" in Latin) vernacular was seen as dirty, impure, and distasteful to the prim and proper Norman overlords.

f9fae3c3-d22d-47dd-97f3-8338a2686ec7

2ffowf

Why are highway and street signs usually white text on green (at least in the US)?

You're correct that white and black would provide the greatest contrast, but the primary issue isn't contrast. Highway signs are "retroreflective," meaning that at night, when you shine your headlights on them, the light not only illuminates the sign, but the sign also directly reflects a good amount of that light back at you. Black backgrounds would not be efficient retroreflectors (since black absorbs most light, reducing reflectivity), plus they would be difficult to see at night since the sky is black. Green was chosen since the eye is highly sensitive to green, it is clearly visible day and night, and it is a good retroreflector. Green is a common choice in many countries, including Canada, Japan, China, and Australia. Many European countries opt for blue backgrounds with white text or white backgrounds with black text.

b3bbf872-bb07-419c-aae1-6e65f39fb895

5pf7hv

Japanese vs American automobiles

American cars used to be the hallmark of reliability. I think a variety of reasons contributed to the decline of quality in American cars. From an econ/financial perspective it just became too expensive to build quality cars. Labor costs for automotive companies kept going up because unions kept wanting more benefits and higher pay for less work. The companies can't redistribute the extra costs to the consumers because that will just drive them to their competition even faster so they did the only thing they could and cut down on quality.

dec55dee-5261-4cc7-88f3-e7bb06be53f6

1sbewf

Why do vehicles that carry a lot of people not require seatbelts?

I asked a school-bus driver once about this, and he replied that kids would use the seat belts as weapons. I, for one, could definitely see my teenage self smacking my seatmate with a seatbelt.

e427ee15-7ec1-41f8-9973-2997fc3902b7

3l6fv7

I always hear about spacetime, but what proof do we have that it exists and that all theories based on it are accurate?

There have been [a number of experiments](_URL_0_) that have shown general relativity to be a more accurate theory of gravity than the classic Newtonian model. For example, our GPS satellites have to correct for relativistic effects. The fact that your GPS works is proof positive that general relativity is a thing.

2efba7dc-fd7b-43fb-b53b-6774827a268a

1mueho

Canadians: What's the political situation with Quebec? What's with the whole "revolution" thing?

Think of a teenager screaming at parents and siblings saying nobody understands me, I'm moving out. Then stays home sulking when they find out they would have to do their own laundry and cooking, and pay for their own groceries. Then says they are staying, but only if they get their own apartment above the garage. Then finally coming out of their room on pizza night, load up their plate, and sits watching tv with the volume up, ignoring everyone else in the family, refusing to share the remote. So, yeah, a passive aggressive teenager.

13910047-283f-4d80-b058-3992cabf5d68

2pmbxs

Only 5 White Rhinos Left (alive) Worldwide--What does that mean for the Eco-System?

Specifically, little at this time. But it is a reduction in the biodiversity that keeps the environment healthy. Best way to explain it is to simplify things - let's just hope Disney doesn't sue me. Follow the circle of life - the antelope eat the grass, the lions eat the antelope, the dead lions decay and feed the grass. If all of the lions disappear, the antelope will over populate, eat all the grass, and everyone dies. If the grass dies, the antelope die, and the lions starve. If the antelope migrate, the lions starve, and the grass rules everything. As a single entity, the white rhino's disappearance is not going to destroy the ecosystem - they are part of a greater collection of animals that fill their step in the circle. But their biodiversity is gone, meaning if there was an event that would wipe out the other rhinos but wouldn't have effected the white rhino, the ecosystem does not have the white rhino to fall back on anymore.

a0129078-0a8c-45a4-bd99-39a256fa3e3d

3ry8rr

Are product restocking fees BS or is there some legitimacy to them?

How do you define BS? It costs the business money to have employees around to put the item back into inventory, makes their logistics less efficient, etc. The entire area of return policies is a strange one. Businesses are under no obligation to accept returns for any reason. Anything they do is strictly for marketing or customer retention reasons. How much did the restocking fee affect your willingness to do business with them down the road? Did it affect your initial purchase decision?

4a8c8e56-c081-4b4e-8f97-bdab729b9144

71c09a

After an earthquake, how do we tell if a building is structurally sound enough to re-enter and use again?

If there's internal damage, there will always be some amount of external damage. The amount of external damage can be very small compared to the internal damage, misleadingly so, but there will always be some. And yeah there are a lot of things you look for. Small cracks (a couple millimeters) are expected in certain materials, and don't necessarily mean its unsafe. Other things are more obvious. If you see piles of debris, a lot of broken windows, huge cracks or the building is actually tilting, its best you stay away. For large buildings, they just don't let anyone go in until professionals can inspect the structure to see if its safe or not. With smaller structures and homes, you can have the people occupying it look for any obvious signs of problems, and make judgement calls until an inspector can get around to it (they'll be busy with more vital things like hospitals in the immediate aftermath, so it takes time to getto residential areas.) Ultimately, its usually pretty obvious if there are any major structural problems.

8ae4f85c-d2bc-41c4-9d58-56ac2f7fd058

46ryfk

neo-liberalism

Economic liberalism was an economic philosophy that placed a premium on individual autonomy and treating the economy as a collection of individuals making choices. For awhile following the great depression, economists tended to look at economies as large systems. This difference in perspective caused these folks to tend to argue more for state intervention in the economy. Starting in the 50's and 60's, groups of economists began going back to ideas that sounded a lot more like classical liberalism, arguing for deregulation, privatization, and free trade. These groups were collectively called "neoliberals"

ab584637-5885-4c7c-bbf7-5bcc4651de44

18pxsq

The psychology behind game grinding

There's two - there's MMO Grinding, and there's classic JRPG Grinding. With MMO Grinding, it's a [Skinner Box](_URL_0_). Push button, receive reward. Early in the game you're rewarded for doing damn near anything. Talk to someone - get a level. Cast a spell, get a level. As you go up in levels, it stretches out more and more, leading you to do the same repetitive tasks for the reward. It's why people do high level dungeons over and over and over again - they're grinding for the "reward" of a slightly different colored items with slightly higher numbers on them than the item they already have. With classic JRPG grinding, it's a mechanic to stretch out the gameplay. Selling a game with 20 hours of gameplay when your competitors claim to have 60 is going to get your game ignored. So rather than assume the player will gain two levels traveling to the next area's boss, you tweak it so that you need to add at least ten levels, maybe more. Item prices are much higher as are spell or item prices. This forces the player to fight random encounters for hours on end to gain the experience and money needed to beat the next boss and move on to the rest of the game. The first is.... when it's done well, you don't notice it. When it's done poorly, it's all the game is. The second is an outdated mechanic and should be delegated to the dustbin of gaming history as something that, in retrospect, is a terrible design decision.

3c280995-2a23-4665-9612-37566f8903ef

2nry3i

Why do you have to get your oil changed after 3 months if you haven't driven 3,000 miles?

And you're told this by people who sell oil. Maybe that should give you a clue. Certainly in modern cars, that should be unnecessary. Edit: Spelling

3fa59f06-e9cd-4ade-b29d-3326b9802292

vbzex

Computer Graphics Cards

Numbering is just a nice way of differentiating the new cards from the old cards. Occasionally it switches. For instances, years ago, NVidia was making cards with thousand series (4XXX up to 9XXX). Then for some reason, they decided not to do 10XXX and started with hundred series (2XX up to currently 6XX). As for specs, there really isn't an ELI5 answer to most of it. In General, for all Cards, a Higher RAM number indicates a better card (Some higher end GFX cards have 2 GB of RAM [Though its usually listed as 2048 MB of RAM]). As for the Other Specs, AMD and NVidia have diverged in how they make their cards, so there aren't a whole lot comparisons you can make anymore just looking at each cards specs. You could go to a PC Repair shop and ask them to install it for you, though it might run you like $50 or more to have that done.

b9e2cf58-554b-4dfc-afb0-3941261cab6e

4k9xq5

Why is it the iphone (and other smartphones) requires a separate file type for a ringtone instead of being able to use mp3's already on it?

Because that's how they are set up, ringtones are a separate purchase, so they don't want to lose money buy allowing you to natively create a ringtone from song files on your device. There are of course super simple ways to manually make them into ringtones. It's just that when you pay for the song, you are paying for a copy to be downloaded and played, not to be used as a ringtone. I wouldn't mind so much if it was a 49¢ purchase, but the average one is $1.29, the same price as the whole song, while only a handful are 99¢. TLDR: greed

94a7561b-e15d-4d78-9d9f-2a4b4320d901

37gbr2

the bill of rights

Most of them are pretty self-explanatory. 1. There can be no laws against what you say, or what religion you follow, or who you associate with. 2. We need a military force, so you're allowed to own guns. 3. You cannot be forced to house troops. 4. Your home can't be searched without an OK from a judge. 5. You can't be tried twice for the same offense. You can't be forced to testify against yourself. 6. You have to have a fair public trial with witnesses you can cross-examine. 7. If you want a jury trial, you are entitled to have it. 8. The punishment must fit the crime. 9. This is not an all-encompassing list. You may have other rights too. 10. If it's not specifically a federal issue, then it's automatically a state issue. [There's more, but I can't really describe it LY5.]

f97d62a0-e4a1-489e-a718-62f2a2741b62

230kx2

Why to high performance engines like drag cars and hot rods have engines that sound like they are out of sync at an idle?

They use really big cams that do not make power until a certain high RPM, its called the power band. At low RPMs the cam isn't working efficiently. Most drag car cam's power band might be from 3000RPMs to 7000Rpms. Drag cars, right before the green light will raise their RPMS to the power band which is where the cam is designed to run

fe7ff542-d821-4646-83b3-59be810fdebf

5bc31h

Does the distance that sound travels follow a linear pattern based on the volume/decibel?

No, it's the inverse square of the distance. [link](_URL_0_)

e10e1082-994c-4120-84d5-02463dee42ff

lxl60

The difference between DVD-R and DVD+R, CD-R and CD+R?

DVD-R and DVD+R are two DVD formats. This means that the way the data is stored on the discs themselves is slightly different. From a user's perspective they both function the same and have almost the same capacity (-R has 7MB more). DVD-R came first and is the "old" format. DVD+R is newer and has some advantages. For example its format is more resilient to errors (can handle more scratches). DVD-R can be read by any DVD player, new or old. However DVD+R can only be read by more recent DVD players. CDs come in only one format.

540ae55e-296e-490f-9655-eac99fd3aea9

1cjrop

April showers

There's something called the "Jet Stream" which controls much of the weather we see on the ground. In early spring it starts shifting north, which leads to storms being pulled behind it landing in various places like the UK or northern North America. I'm not sure if it's actually more than other months in most of the US though. Basically weather moves in a pattern and april is a point where storms are being sent from the ocean over land more than many other times, so we get more rain.

f988f3b3-0194-4eb6-af92-43ed13271028

5n2x9q

How can peristaltic movements transport liquids?

Peristalsis works like this: _URL_0_ Stick a drinking straw in a cup full of water, place your thumb over the end of the straw, and lift it out of the water so that the straw is full of water but no longer in cup. Pinch the straw flat with the thumb and forefinger of your other hand up near where your thumb is covering the end and pull down, still squeezing and covering the end with your other thumb. That's basically how peristalsis works. The muscles pinch the "tube" in a small area (be it your esophagus, intestines, etc) and force its contents along with a wave motion. It pinches, pushes a little ways, and releases. The next muscle pinches it again, pushes it a little ways, and releases. This process repeats until the contents get where they're going.

802c6a6c-18cc-4ed9-a012-1695864f7ea0

41ksga

How does the ISS maintain it's altitude without crashing into the planet?

So you know when your throw a ball it follows a curved path down back to the ground? Well the ISS is moving so fast and is so high up that it's curved path equals the curvature of the earth, so it approaches the earth just as fast the earth curves away from it, so the distance between the earth and the station remain, fairly, constant.

bd3a25c4-63c3-4720-a989-88a29a07c842

tnwoh

Why do I have to pee when I'm nervous?

You may have heard of the 'fight or flight response.' When you are stressed (nervous/frightened etc.) your body releases hormones to help your body deal with the situation - the best known one is adrenaline. This hormone tells your body to do a whole bunch of things, and urinate is among them. It is suggested that this might be to lighten your body to make it easier for you to run.

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23fdk5

what's the difference between an "escort" and prostitute?

Looks price and class. That's it. When you pay for an escort you're paying for "the girlfriend experience" you talk to them eat with them you know go on a "real" date but at the end you know your getting lucky. With a whore your getting some drug addicted pimp abused woman who only wants to get you off as fast as she can so she can fuck some other guy in 10 seconds with out cleaning up. That's the difference.

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2l31r4

What is stopping us from just replacing our natural adult teeth with synthetic ones?

Mostly Price. Where I live it costs around £1000-£1500 for 1 dental implant.

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1u86da

Since whales are mammals, and need water to live like we do, how do they get it if they live in salt water, which is bad to drink?

They get it from the food that they eat. Whales, and dolphins, can't starve to death, they die of dehydration first. They do get a little bit from sea water but their kidneys can't remove much salt so if they accidentally drink too much sea water when they eat that could kill them.

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2gn3xo

How exactly a silent approval of criminal acts by law enforcement authorities goes through in modern, western countries?

You've kind of hit the nail on the head. It tends to vary from place to place, but I think a lot of law enforcement organisations don't see a great deal of point going after small-time drug dealers. As you say, there's always going to be demand for drugs and if any police do turn up it's pretty easy just to disappear. In Japan, 'grey area' industries like prostitution and drug dealing are technically illegal, but run by the Yakuza, who's existence is tolerated by the state. They don't want to make that stuff legal, but it's going to happen, so better that it happens in the open.

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4aa6b2

Why do we move our body (by either dancing or simply bouncing our head) to music? What exactly in our body is causing this?

Actions speak louder than words. Movement can encode aggression or play or healing or prayer or mating or celebration or grief. Movement attracts attention because people need to know how to interpret your intentions. Someone dancing through the front door of a bank will draw a different attention than someone dancing the same way through the door of a club, so context is also in play. Any gesture or movement, done in unison by a group, becomes a rhythmic dance that encodes some agreed on meaning; waving baseball caps up and down in the dugout helps the batter get a hit, or at least feel the support of his teammates. Now for the music side of your question. Music induces emotions in the audience. Good musical technique has been defined as the audience experiencing the emotions that the musician has prepared for them. The derivation of the word 'emotion' contains this: from Latin emovere "move out, remove, agitate,". This are all actions. So the simple answer is that music can make a group of people feel emotional, and if the emotions are strong enough, the group will move their bodies (dancing, fists in the air and shouting). Getting our emotions outside of ourselves lets us celebrate and control ourselves. Here's where the confusion comes in: Calm. This could be indifference to the music. This could be unfamiliarity with a specific kind of music. This could also be the intent of the music; creating a calm state of mind. Calm is not an emotion in the classical sense; it is stillness embodied and lacks agitation. However, in the modern sense of states of mind, calm is just another energy level that we can measure and it happens to be associated with stillness rather than actions. The function that ties all this together is a shared experience. The musician creates it and the audience participates in it. And that, IMHO, is why we dance.

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2ud4g2

How are outside noises able to be incorporated into your dream?

Brains are complex things. While dreaming you are thought to be basically consolidating the memories you want to keep and not keep, and you create scenes in your mind involving things that were important to you recently (consciously or unconsciously). So while your brain is doing all of that, your ears, eyes, nose, and mouth are still wired in. Incoming stimuli from any one of those sensory organs can be implemented into the seemingly chaotic mess of neural activity that we call dreaming.

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6dk45k

How does restarting something (i.e. a computer or a PlayStation or such) work?

PC hardware comes typically with only a single program baked in, called the "bootloader". This program is designed to boot up whatever Operating System, or OS, has been installed on it. When you turn on the PC or PS4, it starts the bootloader, which is a relatively small program that simply loads the PS4 OS or Windows or MacOS or Android, etc. When you restart the PC or PS4 (without shutting it down or turning it off), the OS program exits with an additional instruction to the bootloader program to reload the OS. And that's exactly what the bootloader does: it resets the starting environment and loads the OS, as though it had been turned on for the first time. *edit, phrasing*

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4q9amu

Why are we so reluctant to kill animals nowadays when, in the past, our society used hunt all the time and feel no remorse?

People live sheltered lives, some going through all of it without killing any animals or getting into a fight. There's also social conditioning, people being told since they're toddlers that it's a heinous act to hurt people and animals. People like to elevate themselves to a moral highground by bashing the 'barbaric' practices of their ancestors, something they can afford to do because they've never experienced starvation. Killing animals is necessary to our survival, the only difference is that nowadays the majority of people don't have to get their hands dirty to enjoy the meat and hides.

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62cu39

how does depression change the way you think?

So I'm not quite sure why you have this labeled as chemistry, so I'm going to do my best to mention chemistry, but this is more of a biology question. You have these things called **neurotransmitters**. Some of them dictate how you feel. Serotonin is a mood stabilizer, it's very important in making sure you can have "normal" emotions. Some people have problems with their serotonin levels, take me. I make maybe half or less of the normal serotonin that a healthy person does. This leads to difficulty controlling my emotions, especially those of anger and depression. Depression has many forms besides the one above, but in most cases it can become very difficult to think happy thoughts. You may have self deprecating thoughts or focus solely on the negatives. Final point: depression is different for everyone, and this answer is influenced by **my** experience. Hope this answered your question.

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6uhv29

How does a boat motor work, and how does a small propeller move such a large object?

A boat motor works similar to a car motor except they're usually direct drive or have a simple single speed forward gearing, as well as a reverse gear. You have a shaft attached directly to the engine rather than a complex gearbox. The shaft runs through what's called a stuffing box, which is a grease filled tube that keeps water out. Very large boats (cruise ships, container ships) use azimuth thrusters. Large rotating pods which contain an electric motor that is powered by a diesel generator in the ship's engine room. So no need for a stuffing As for the propeller, they work the same way an airplane propeller does, or a fan, or a swimmer doing the front crawl. They scoop water and push it back. Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, this causes the boat to move forward. Thrust. You can change how much water they scoop by adjusting the angle of the blades, the pitch. The sharper the angle, the more water they can scoop at a lower rotational speed. Allowing them to work more efficiently. Since water is more viscous (thicker) than air, you don't need as much surface area or rotational speed as you would with say a plane. Nor will you need to go nearly as fast. So you can make the prop smaller. The downside with adding more pitch is it requires more torque, rotational power. Which is why boats are often powered by high torque engines like diesel, steam, and electric as opposed to gas. With a gas engine, the prop has to turn faster, so it needs a shallower pitch to get the same amount of speed. But it's doing less work per rotation. So when buying a prop, you really have to keep in mind the ones that are designed to work with your engine. There's another issue that crops up too if you spin a prop too fast: cavitation. The spinning prop creates a low pressure zone which causes water to boil at below 100c. Bubbles of steam appear and pop, which cause shock waves that can actually damage the prop.

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6om92e

Why, when through binoculars or a telescope 'the wrong way' do things look smaller, but you can't make the same thing happen with a magnifying glass?

There is always more than one lens/curved mirror inside the telescope, so the result is different if you reverse the order light goes through them. When there's only one symmetric lens looking either way through it produces same result.

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4nrjfx

What does "political economy" mean and how can it meaningfully be contrasted with the "moral economy"

"Political economics" is an old phrase which means the same thing as just plain "economics" means today (or perhaps "macroeconomics", if you want to get less-like 5) Basically, what people used to call "economics" is now called "home economics", or "home ec". And what they used to call "political economics" is now just "economics". "Moral economics" is just some self-righteous people trying to tell everyone else what to do. It is not particularly comparable to economics as a whole, any more than "I like blue and so should you" is comparable to "color exists and is a property of light as perceived by the brain through the eyes". Unless you meant "moral philosophy", which is from the same time period as the term "political economics" is.

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2mnum8

What is being 'calculated' by supercomputers?

I work at a research university, and system administration of our supercomputers falls under my team's responsibilities. What ours supercomputer do is simulation. They simulate things like chemicals interactions, nuclear reactions, electronic systems, and many other things. In many areas of research, it is a lot cheaper to develop models that can be simulated in supercomputers to test ideas, instead of experimenting with real world systems. Our research groups use their models on our supercomputers to research solar energy, advanced films, water treatment, artificial intelligence, medical imaging, and a lot more. All of this requires a lot of processing power because 1, these are complex models involving the interactions between multiple dimensions of variables; 2, because being able to perform calculations faster means either getting results sooner, or being able to simulate systems in more detail, with better results.

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1sgp3s

How does Italy regard it's history in terms of their involvement in WW2 different from their "ally" Germany?

Because at one point during the war (1943) the Italian King had Mussolini arrested and at this point Italy was not part of the Axis (Germany, Italy and Japan) anymore. Germany, from an ally became an invading force of Italy. Also, the anti-Jewish laws were repealed by the new Badoglio government while the war was still going on. Basically, by the end of the war, Italy was not viewed as one of the 'bad guys' anymore. So while for Germany there were the [Nuremberg trials](_URL_0_), where all the atrocities committed by Germany came into surface, no such trial took place against Italy. So it's a combination of two things: a. Italy probably didn't commit atrocities comparable to Germany; b. any war crimes Italy did commit did not undergo the same level of inquiry of those commited by Germany.

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5zz7q3

The Operation Teapot video is one of the craziest things I've seen. What exactly am I seeing?

> but what are the "eruptions" coming from it? Was it detonated in the air? It was detonated on the top of a tall tower. The "eruptions" are the guy-wires that stabilized the tower being boiled into gas and plasma from the light of the explosion before the blast wave proper reaches them.

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8e483z

How does bioluminescence work?

Chemical reactions but instead of releasing (like most of them) heat as energy, or even electricity they release photons aka light

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2e20xl

I read on reddit to get rid of a persons hicups ask them when are they going to pay you back for money they owe you when they really dont owe you. I tried it and it worked why?

I once had someone cure my hiccups by asking me "Hey, what color is eggplant? Do you see anything eggplant colored in this room?" I looked around intently and couldn't find anything, and I told him no. He then asked me if they were gone, and sure enough, totally cured. I think something about the act of suddenly focusing on something else entirely had something to do with it. Maybe someone asking you for money you owe them has a similary effect?

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3j0zds

How can they clone living animals?

Well, most people use the word "clone" to mean something other than it actually is. I blame the popular sci-fi use of cloning to refer to creating an exact duplicate of a person, along with their memories and personality and such. In real life, cloning means to take the DNA of an animal, and create a new baby animal with the same DNA. So it's more like creating a new identical twin baby of the original creature, and not at all like creating an exact copy of that creature.

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1rd7am

the difference between shampoo, conditioner, body soap, 2-in-1 and 3-in-1.

Shampoo is a type of soap designed for your hair. It gets grease out of your hair. You should only shampoo your head. Don't put shampoo on the ends of your hair if you're a girl, it's too harsh and will damage your hair. Conditioner puts the life back in hair after being shampooed. It moisturizes it. Body soap is a soap designed for your skin. It gets dirt off your skin. You can't just wash dirt and grease off with water because water and oil don't mix. Soap is an "emulsifier" it means that it makes it so water can wash away oil. 2-in-1 is conditioner and shampoo mixed together. So you only have to use one product to wash your hair. There's a lot of rumors that it's bad for your hair. From what I've learned, if you have very fine hair then it's better to not use a 2 in 1. But most hair works just fine for a 2 in 1. 3 in 1 is shampoo, conditioner and body soap all mixed in one. Guys usually use this. You can literally put it on any part of your body.

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5fkrgz

how does your brain decide you like/dislike a certain song? What influences that? And why do we all like different songs?

Basically, it comes down to sensing versus perceiving. Generally everyone senses the same things the same way, from vision to taste, excluding those with sensory deprivations (colorblindness, deafness, etc.). Perceiving is a different story. It's all in your head. We attach meaning to different sensations. Like when you see your SO and get happy if you're in a great relationship. Basically you attach meaning to different sounds you hear. People tend to like major keys that are consonant, but of course not all because different people attach different meanings based on their experiences! Hope this helps, this is the first ELI5 explanation that I've done! Feel free to ask further questions!

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69chcv

How do LED thermometers work?

Op are you talking about Laser Temperature Guns/thermometers?? (That tell the temp after pointing the device and laser at an object) If you are: the laser doesn't have anything to do with the temp, it just aligns the sensor that is located right next to the laser on the front of the device.

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4wfmjl

How is the 3D effect created in movies?

You need a second camera that is filming from a slightly different perspective, just like humans can see in three dimensions because they have two eyes set slightly apart. (In computer animation you can arbitrarily create a second perspective on a scene, so it's easier but it still requires extra rendering to produce the film.) You play back footage from both perspectives at the same time, but the viewer wears polarized lenses which filter the image so that the left eye sees one thing and the right eye another. You may recall older 3D using colored lenses for the same purpose. You can also process a standard film to give it computer-generated 3D effects. This is a lot cheaper than filming a real 3D movie, but the result tends to be ugly.

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4hugcc

Why is sleep so comfortable shortly upon waking(especially when you have work/school/etc)?

When you wake up in the morning, you get something called sleep inertia. It's the groggyness you feel up to two hours (usually half an hour) after you have woken up. It's a "false" kind of sleepy, which makes you want to stay in bed. This combined with how comfortable your warm, soft bed is, makes it so darn hard to get up. _URL_1_ _URL_0_ edit: a word.

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68buiu

What is the point of using pointers in programming?

Passing around the data itself can get very expensive. It is fine when the data is small, like a single number or even a small string of text. When you get to large objects or data structures like arrays, it becomes prohibitvely expensive to just pass the data. Instead you pass around pointers to the data, so the data can just sit where it is, and whoever needs it can get to it via the pointer. Furthermore, pointers give you a layer of abstraction above the data. On this iteration through the loop, the pointer can point to data structure X. On the next iteration through the loop, maybe it points to data structure X-prime. This gives the programmer a general way to use different data objects without having to rewrite the code to copy them around all over the place. You posted an example of an array data structure in Java below. That is actually a pointer to the array, under the covers. Languages like C and C++ make this pointer explicit, because they are intended for people who want to be a bit closer to the underlying hardware (for performance reasons, typically).

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37me9k

What happens to your body that makes you dizzy when you get up too fast?

When you stand, blood briefly pools in your lower extremities. Your body undergoes what is called vasoconstriction, to equalize the blood pressure pretty quickly, by squeezing blood back up into your body. However, you have a brief period of insufficient blood in your upper body, leaving you to feel faint. People occasionally *do* faint from this in fact, if the effect is severe enough. This is called orthostatic hypotension.

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q136b

What would happen if an asteroid the size of the moon hit the earth?

The asteroid that may have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs had a diameter of about ~~170~~ 10-15 km. The moon has a diameter of about 3,500 kilometers. I'm not a scientist so I won't pretend to tell you exactly what will happen, but I think that it goes without saying this would be a catastrophe unlike anything seen before.

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3cboqp

My grandparents live in a small town, where all of the older residents have a land line number that begins with the same three numbers. Why is it the same?

Jesus christ, are you trying to make us feel old, OP? That's how ALL land line phone numbers used to work. If there was less than 10000 lines, they all belonged to the same exchange. You'd get 555-0000, next person got 555-0001, next person got 555-0002. You kids and your cell phones and skype and hoola hoops and pacman video games and Zima...

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4dqvpv

How do perishable food companies know the expiration date of their food/drink?

They "set" the date, they don't know it precisely. And they set that date based on a combination of studied observation when they can (how long an apple will last) a set of conditions ("keep refrigerated" or "consume immediately on opening"), and known properties of the food and its packaging, and then add a safety margin to it. The known properties can include how long a piece of cut meat remains safe before too many bacteria contact it and start growing, or how long before the vegetable starts to get brown and crinkly and so won't sell, or how pristine a plastic wrapper can expect to last if exposed to different temperatures and degrading light sources on a store shelf, or how many preservative chemicals are contained within the product, or when it starts to smell bad, or how long before freezer-burn sets in. All of that adds up to a time when it's very likely the product will no longer be AS SAFE (which is not the same as 'safe') to consume, as well as "as tasty" and "as visually appealing" and "as mixed uniformly and not all congealed". Then they stick a time buffer on there so it expires or is 'best before' a bit before that. Finally, that Best Before date has to pass the inspection of whatever food control agencies are out there. Your business will be shut down, for example, if you sell rotten meat.

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1npkg5

Why Nuking a asteroid that is headed for Earth is not a good strategy.

Let's start by assuming that we have the nukes to fracture the asteroid. It may be a long shot, but nukes release a *lot* of energy and asteroids aren't necessarily as solid as a typical rock on earth. The big thing is that the Earth is still being hit. When you break an asteroid into two pieces, the energy of the original asteroid just gets split between the two, so all of that energy is still headed towards Earth. This is equally true of breaking it into 2 pieces and breaking it into a million pieces. You're not going to reduce an asteroid to sand-sized pieces, but even if you did all of that sand is going to hit the Earth. This could be bad in and of itself as all of that energy gets transferred to the atmosphere in the form of heat, although that is probably not an apocalyptic event in and of itself. However, the bit thing to realize is that the asteroid isn't going to be split into a billion pieces the size of pebbles/sand. There are going to be *lots* of pieces that are still large enough to make it to the ground. By breaking the asteroid up you are just spreading the destruction over a wider area of the planet's surface. This would be like replacing a cannon ball with grapeshot--it's still highly destructive. Ultimately nuking an asteroid would probably have *some* positive effect, but if all of the pieces are still hitting the Earth then it's not really worth it. By contrast, if we find an apocalyptic asteroid with the Earth in its sites we can send a sapcecraft to it to alter its orbit ever so slightly so that it doesn't actually hit the Earth. If we detect the object early enough then the change to its orbit would not have to be that much.

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5th87b

Why are Canada Geese called such instead of Canadian Geese?

Because it's their name, not their nationality. If I live in New York, and my name is Bob France, you wouldn't call me French.

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4xxs8x

With fight or flight, is there an effective way to overcome the freeze response?

Training. Specifically, what is known as "stress inoculation." This is why new recruits in the military have to complete tasks while being yelled at and generally messed with by their instructors- a crude imitation of the stress of combat. It's why high quality police training involves responding to crises amidst all sorts of artificial stressors like simulated ammunition and panicked victims. It's why professional boxers get hit again and again and again long before stepping into the ring. If you are routinely exposed to a certain kind of stress, you can become desensitized to it. Mental armor, so to speak. You can be trained to *act* when faced with stress rather than freezing up.

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2g9gol

Did Rob Ford actually help the city of Toronto?

[Here's a good article that goes over the positive outcome for Toronto](_URL_0_) tl;dr: While Ford's campaign was based on "stopping the gravy train", he never found one. Gravy leaked out of small cracks in municipal government. Ford saved $100,000 here and there by combining depts, etc. Didn't see it mentioned in the article, but ~$12mil saved by privatizing garbage collection. Started MUCH needed repairs on the elevated Gardiner Expressway (only highway that serves the direct downtown area). Nothing came out of it thanks to council and provincial government, but Ford was adamant about adding and expanding subway lines.

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3jkicb

Why are commenters on YouTube videos so douchey?

1. \ > 1 billion user accounts, so probably some double-digit percentage of the worlds population 2. no sorting or gating, random people from any community can trip across any other video, and some will. 3. Fans. Youtube culture encourages the type of rabid fan building that . . . okay, look, many of the heavier users on youtube are teenagers. Youtube brags that among teenagers, youtube celebrities are better known than other celebrities. There are many sensible teens. There are many sensible teens who like things that I don't like. There are also many teens who embody the worst of, say, justin bieber fans. 4. Let's combine these three points and imagine the youtube comments as the community basis for flamewars that resemble 'psx vs. n64' or 'ps2 vs. xbox', but the sides are obscure, sometimes wholly imagined by only one side, you can't always discern what point someone is making on an unrelated video from their comment if you aren't part of the sub-community, and youtube comments are the base point for these flamewars because the celebrities are wholly on youtube. You ever see those collapsed comments which begin with something like: "I like the vocals at 2:17" [[see 17 collapsed comments]] "Shitting idiot, Prussia was its own country back then and can't be blamed for that!"? Okay, that's a real example that was an argument between (I'm ashamed to have searched this up), a hetelia fan and a fan of some youtube channel that uses DnD minis to represent european countries to make racist punchlines. 5. People who aren't into that . . . stuff . . . stop commenting. People who are into that start commenting more. 6. This means there is almost always a confrontational tone/argument expectation in youtube comment sections. Which means some of the more agreeable folks who are left still commenting, are also given into interpreting other comments in the worst possible light. "Of course it's cavitation!" "Well, it's more likely a heat pump operating through sound waves passing through the centre, which is why it needs a certain frequency differential to produce heat past unity. Cavitation wouldn't explain the heat production beyond 100%, and I bet the core of that freezes after too long" "You're an idiot, there's no need for any of your fancy heat pump BS, look up cavitation!" (Real comments on a rotary water heating engine. . . albeit toned down) And then . . . what's left? A whole bunch of people arguing with each other across the breath of youtube, where 99% of everyone doesn't know what the hell they're on about, and the rest of everyone else commenting is doing so with the expectation of horrible comments & arguments to follow. We are left, in short, with the worst fraction of a billion user accounts. And the bottom 1% of that is pretty deep.

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672mkj

Why do basements/cellars tend to attract mold and mildew so much?

A cellar is usually colder then the outside as it is kept dark and surrounded by cold dirt. Humidity is based on not only the amount of water in the air but also the temperature of the air. So when air gets down into the basement and gets cooled down its humidity increases. All life needs water to thrive. Basements with a lot of humidity will have a lot more humidity so it is easier for mold to get the water it needs.

91a809a7-5c38-49b5-a08e-06236b26f2bf

3bm0ya

Is it possible to have more than one type of flu (bacterial or viral) running in your body at the same time?

Just to clarify a little more... "Flu" does not just mean illness. It is specifically illness caused by *Influenza* viruses. In fact 'flu' is short for 'influenza'. The term "bacterial flu" is misleading because it means a bacterial infection occurring because your immune system has been weakened by the flu virus. So you can't have bacterial flu without having "actual" influenza caused by the influenza virus. So your answer is in your question. You can only have what is confusingly described as "bacterial flu" if you have viral flu. If you're using the word "flu" to describe any illness with similar symptoms then yes, you can definitely have as many infections as you would care to pick up. It will eventually kill you. Immune disorders (like AIDS) are such a problem because you end up with every disease and infection out there and it becomes impossible to stop the sufferer getting sick and dying from any and all kinds of infections.

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2jwxva

What is the difference between "Partly Cloudy" and "Partly Sunny" forecasts?

Partly Cloudy means blue skies with some clouds Partly Sunny means a cloudy sky with some occasional sun

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5zozn3

Why do humans express ourselves creatively?

**TL;DR**: *We have intelligence and spare time and a desire to accomplish something and to leave something behind or give something to other people. Being creative uses the first to fill the second and fulfill those desires.* In terms of flair, this isn't so much about culture as it is biology. The first reason is that we're a thinking animal that isn't driven solely by instinct. We have thought processes that very very routinely move us out of the realms of "automatically do X when the environment is like Y", which cause a caterpillar to munch when placed on a leaf or a deer to run when it hears a loud noise. Then there's our lifespan and living standards. We do not sleep or have to search for food and shelter and comfort and mating every single second of every single day. We have "down time" and the intelligence to both use that "down time", and want to use that "down time" somehow or we'll get bored. Finally that intelligence causes many of us to seek creative satisfaction, and to serve some purpose. We want something called 'fulfillment' out of life. It can be a public form of fulfillment for some where they're recognized by others for what they do, a feeling of pride for having helped others feel better by doing an excellent stand-up comedy or rap song or dance routine that spreads joy, or an entirely internal drive which causes someone to feel very satisfied when they have accomplished something creative like completing a work of sculpture. All three things - time, ability enabled by intelligence, and the need for some form of personal fulfillment, lead to creative expression. And the level varies greatly from person to person, dictating how central that need is to the way they live their life.

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5oi3ut

When people go outside to take a breath of fresh air, why does that help calm them down?

Going outside firstly removes the trigger and stimulus that's causing the stress - and so they can get out of an emotionally charged situation. Fresh air may also be a change in temperature, so they have a different physical response too, and that may help them breathe deeper, giving the stress hormones a chance to disperse

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1i9rii

Program Files and Program Files (x86). Why are there two different ones and what is the difference between them?

The processor in your computer works based on instructions. Instructions like "add these two numbers", "move this number to somewhere else in the computer's memory", "erase this section of memory". When someone writes a computer program in a programming language, the compiler turns their code into a series of instructions for the processor. To make this easier there are standardized "instruction sets" that computer makers use that are the same across many processors. The most common instruction set in computers is called x86. This set is based off the instruction set for an Intel processor in the 1970s called the Intel 8086. Since then the standard has been updated many times to add new instructions as processors got more powerful. Because this instruction set is so old, it any processor that uses it is only able to use 4GB of memory in your computer. The numbers it can use as addresses in the computers memory can only go up to 2^32, which is 4,294,967,296 (aka 4 gigabytes, giga means billion.) that is to say, x86 processors have 32 bit wide address space. X86-64 (sometimes just called x64) is an addition to x86 that lets it address memory in a space 2^64 bits wide, allowing up to 256 terabytes (256 thousand gigabytes) of memory space. Basically, programs in Program Files are put together (compiled) for versions of Windows that support x86-64 processors, while programs in the Program Files (X86) folder are built for x86 (32 bit) versions of Windows. 64 bit versions of Windows should have no trouble running x86 programs.

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3202kn

I just read the Brian Banks story; Why are women who falsley accuse men of rape hardly ever if at all sent to prison?

If they were proved, in a court of law, beyond a reasonable doubt, to have knowingly and falsely accused someone, they do get sent to prison.

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2g2qc9

How is Yahoo still a top 5 most visited website?

A tremendous number of browsers came with it auto-homepaged in the earlier days of the internet. It was the preferred way of accessing search functionality when the web really started taking off, and it had excellent branding. And that stuck, and stuck hard. A whole lot of older users have it as their home page, so every time they browse the web they start there because that's what they did ten or fifteen years ago.

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7x6u54

What exactly are Reddit bots and who runs them?

They're automated computer programs. Whoever writes them runs them. Anyone can write a bot and read Reddit posts and reply. Automoderator is a special bot that's written by Reddit staff

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584uzc

What does the term "too big to fail" mean?

It's a commonly used phrase to mean "this company is so big and does so much business that if it were to fail and go under, it would have massive negative effects on the economy as a whole." For example: We have a lot of banks in the US, but we have some *really really big* ones, too. When those banks started to fail, they were big enough that they caused massive, very bad effects to the economy of the *entire country* and frankly even extending out to foreign countries as well. Since those companies are *too big to fail,* the government needed to step in and help them to not fail in order to prevent another Great Depression.

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6tbv1s

Charlottesville Protest & Violence

Biased prejudiced people are feeling empowered since the last general election. So they are coming out in a mass rally. Some of them are quite willing to use violence. This is reminiscent of the Brown Shirts in Germany before WWII. The Psychology of this behavior requires a book. Books have been written about this. [Here is a list of 16 good books](_URL_0_) I especially liked the one about Henrietta Lacks. But these books do not really describe the mind set of the protestors. Beyond Hate: White Power and Popular Culture (The Cultural Politics of Media and Popular Culture) may be one book which does. I have not read it. Many people in these groups feel disenfranchised. They actually yearn to return to the days not long past when being white automatically meant being selected for a job or admission to college.

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82q7e7

If your voice sounds higher than what it sounds like to you, how can you sing the correct pitch?

Practice listening to yourself and *actually* hearing your own voice. Singing in a small, acoustically live room (like a bathroom) can help. I recommend purchasing some pvc pipe and making a small phone shape so that you can sing into one end and have it projected directly into your ear. I can almost certainly assure you it is not a biological problem.

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5zxj17

Why are there no Grape flavored Yogurts?

Chobani made a grape yogurt, but I don't think it sold very well. Grape and yogurt doesn't really mix in a way that is large scale marketable to consumers. Yogurt can be kind of sour, mixing that with grape is not a flavor many people can get behind.

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1mptv0

Please ELI5 the concept of IPOs and what are the effects of this IPO to companies that did not previously have this.

IPO = Initial Public Offering Could also be called "Taking a company public" ELI5 version - You own a company. It is not small, but not as large as you want it to be. You could borrow money from a bank in order to grow your business, but for a bunch of reasons banks are not always willing or able to loan you large sums of money. Instead, you offer to sell ownership of your company to the general public - in the form of shares - in exchange for their money. In effect, your company is now partially owned by private individuals and investors, and you have more money to invest in further business development. There are huge legal implications of this. Every country has security laws which must be followed when you take a company public. This is mostly to prevent abuse of the public through various scams and insider trading.

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8meaah

Why is tinfoil (aluminum foil) so heat resistant?

Heat resistent in what way? If you refer to "Why doesn't it melt", simply because it's melting point is incredibly high, much higher than your grill can produce (​(660.32 °C, ​1220.58 °F). If you are instead refering to "Why doesn't it get super hot to the touch" then you're building on a wrong premise: it isn't heat resistant at all and does get hot. It gets just as hot as the food underneath it. However tinfoil is so thin and so large that any heat that it does have dissapitates into the surrounding air almost instantly. Things that have little mass cannot hold as well to their energy as more massive things, and things with large surface area cool down faster than things that have lower area.

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1pbelz

How exactly does alcohol get you "drunk"

Alcohol is a chemical that affects almost every organ in the human body, but in particular it interferes with the brains' cells abilities to communicate with each other. If you drink alcohol faster than your liver and kidneys can process it, it begins to build up in the bloodstream and hence gets carried to your brain, where it basically blocks some of the normal brain behaviour from occurring. [This paper explains alcohol's physical effects](_URL_0_) in a reasonably simple to understand format.

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24un3i

Why do french fries taste good while they're hot and nasty cold?

Your tongue can detect basic flavours only: sweetness, saltiness, sourness, etc. Most of what we call the sense of taste is actually sense of smell. (An experiment can confirm this: peel an apple and a raw potato and cut a cube from each. Pinch your nose and eat both, and it may be hard to tell which is which.) The smell of food while eating comes from molecules being carried from the food into your nose via the back of your mouth. Food that is hot gives off loads of these molecules, but food that is cold gives off hardly any. Hence a large part of the flavour of food is lost when it is cold, so your fries no longer taste as good.

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8tgsfc

How are we able to measure space?

There are several methods to calculate the distance of a celestial body. Which one is used depends on the exact circumstance. Here are some of the most important methods: --- * **Parallax**: Earth orbits the sun. In the process of this orbit, we change our position in space relative to a celestial body (just like you see a nearby tree in a different position if you move 10 steps to one side) Using trigonometry, we can calculate the distance to the celestial body in question. * Advantages: very precise for close objects, no complicated instruments needed. * Disadvantage: only possible for close objects --- * **Spectral emission**: Stars emit photons with specific wavelengths based on the material they are fusing in their core. We can identify the composition of a star by analyzing those photons. Due to the expansion of space, however, the wavelengths of photons emitted very far away get redshifted. That means, their wavelengths get longer the further they travel. By comparing the wavelengths of the photons we *measure* to the wavelengths the photons *should have* we can calculate the distance those photons traveled. And thus the distance to the celestial body. * Advantage: Possible over longer distances * Disadvantage: The object has to be bright enough so we can measure spectral lines reliably --- * **Standard candles**: Standard candles are celestial bodies of known luminosity (~brightness). We know this luminosity due to the characteristics of some bodies (special types of super novae etc.) By comparing the absolute brightness to the apparent brightness (the brightness the object has vs the brightness we see from the distance) we can calculate the distance to the standard candle. By identifying standard candles in distant galaxies and nebulae, we can infer the distance of those structures. * Advantage: Possible over long distances * Disadvantage: We need to find standard candles ---

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5ds6tk

How do nuclear launch codes work exactly, and can just about anyone use it?

This was covered in part by This American Life recently. _URL_0_ "So, here's the thing about the codes that people don't realize. It's not like he has a piece of paper in his pocket. It's like, here are the nuclear codes. It doesn't work that way. How it works is, there's a military officer that walks around with what's called a Football. That officer, he's got more experience than I do. And at the end of the day, if the president goes off the handle and says, nuke these guys because I don't like them, we're taught, in the military, as officers, that we have a moral obligation to refuse orders that are not moral. So if my commander tells me to do that, and it is not moral, I have an obligation to tell him to [BLEEP] off."

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l59t6

Why do I always wake up early after a night of hard drinking?

It also messes with your sleep cycle. I'm afraid I can't remember exactly how it goes about doing this, but I saw a documentary where the person who the sleep-scientists gave several large glasses of red wine ended up staying in REM and light sleep relatively longer, and only attaining deep sleep for a short time before coming back into lighter sleep at an early stage than normal

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3ilms1

What the Drake and Meek Mill beef was all about.

Meek called Drake out for using a ghost writer (aka, having someone else write his songs and hiding that). Drake got offended and started a one-sided twitter war while Meek sat back and laughed. Drake made a dis track, Meek still sat back and laughed. It's a joke because it's like watching a 3 year old throw a tantrum and tell their parents they hate them and they're running away forever while the parents are like "yea, sure, uh huh, finish your juice sweetie".

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