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75o3xx | Why do toddlers love to hand you things? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The theory is yes, they get a predictable result (Oh THANK YOU!!!) for an easy action. It's very rewarding in a world that isn't very predictable for them yet, especially when they're experimenting and you keep telling them \"NO don't climb on that, you'll hurt yourself!\" OK, let me try giving them this block... Oh THANK YOU!!!"
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75o828 | What keeps attorneys protected from being an accomplice when they're defending someone who committed a crime and found guilty? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First I can only speak to American law as I'm an American lawyer (and criminal law isn't my area, but it's a pretty basic answer). First, the exact definition of accomplice varies from state to state (because of the way common law works), but effectively an accomplice is a person who assisted in the actual commission of a crime without actually engaging in the criminal action. So, imagine a bank robbery. The person actually in the bank stealing the money is guilty of the theft. The person driving the getaway car hasn't actually committed a crime, but would be guilty as an accomplice. There is distinction between accomplice and accessory in some places. Accessory is basically the same idea but someone who wasn't directly involved in the crime in some way, but still \"knowingly\" \"facilitated\". In the American legal system, a lawyer is not helping a potential criminal commit a crime. First, if a defendant tells their lawyer that they were guilty a lawyer CANNOT say they are innocent in court. They can make lots of arguments about how the police failed in procedure or don't have enough evidence, but cannot claim innocence. If a lawyer is found to have lied, they can in fact lose their license, be fined or potentially face jail time (for contempt of court). It should be noted, lawyers aren't testifying, so perjury doesn't really relate to a lawyer potentially lying at a trial. Edit: fixed a typo",
"Because they didn't help them commit the crime? The whole point of a lawyer is to prove guilt or defend innocence. They didn't help commit the crime.",
"The lawyer was never anywhere near the crime itself. How could he be an accomplice? He's only there to defend - as an advocate because the accused might not be very good at arguing for himself.",
"Being able to defend a client without any legal consequences is one of the foundations of a functional and equitable legal system. If defending a client makes them an accomplice to that crime, why would a lawyer ever represent anyone accused of anything more serious than a parking ticket? And if they did, they would be more concerned about their well being than their client's, and push them to take any deal that came along."
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75objb | How far away is the 'drop off' of vision? | Suppose you are standing in a flat plane that goes on for miles, how far would you be able to see before your vision just stops, what does it look like? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can see stars thousands of light years away - just look up at night. Distance itself isn't a problem. But you can't see over a \"flat\" plane on Earth for more than a few miles, because the Earth slopes over the horizon. Or there's extra hazy atmosphere in the way.",
"Our vision is limited by light availability rather than distance. In a vacuum, light travels infinitely, so theoretically your vision would continue on to infinity - this is why we can see stars that are thousands of light years away. If you were in atmosphere, and the plane extends through atmosphere as well, light would gradually become less available the further you are away from it, and become more reddish as distance increases (due to shorter wavelength light being scattered easier). I suspect that as a result of this everything around you would look \"normal\", things a lot further away would look pretty red, with the very far distance being black due to all light coming from that source being scattered or absorbed. *edit* this is assuming you are talking about a theoretical flat plane that continues on to infinity in all directions, rather than a location on Earth."
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75oj0r | Steven Hawking has ALS since 1963. How is his body able to surivive this disease for such a long time? | From what I know, the prognosis for people with ALS is 5 to 10 years. How is he surviving it for 54 years? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He is getting excellent care. The progression of the disease is highly variable. He is also willing to stay alive even in his condition. He still thinks very well and can engage in his favorite activity.",
"ALS isn't a single disease. There are many distinct *types* of ALS. They don't all progress in the same way, and even the same type of ALS can vary in its progression from individual to individual. Hawking has a childhood-onset type of ALS. Childhood-onset ALS types tend to be slower progressing than adult-onset ALS types. His particular type of childhood-onset ALS is rare, and progresses even slower than most others. Combine that with *excellent* care throughout his life, and you've got your answer. Now, *why* are some types of ALS slower in their progression than others? Nobody has any flipping clue.",
"I think he has a different form of the disease called PLS, there are a few different types of ALS."
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75omb5 | How is it that babies have more bones then adults? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As we grow our bones fuse together. All of the ones from when you were a baby can probably still be identified with a Keen eye in your adult skeleton. It's also why babies don't have kneecaps until a few months.",
"When you are born, you have lots and lots of tiny bones. As you get older, they get bigger and merge (fuse) together. [Here]( URL_0 ) is an x-ray of a human fetus. Notice how the hips are 4 separate bones and how the bones in the baby's knees and elbows do not connect, etc,"
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75omiu | What exactly is an anxiety disorder and how is this linked to the sympathetic nervous system? Why do antidepressants work on anxiety? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you are confronted with a stressful event, your brain anticipates the energy and focus for the event. It's gonna stimulate or slow different systems in your body. In stressful situations (good or bad), you are gonna use your accelerator (sympathetic system) and pump more blood, breathe more oxygen, get more focus and make your muscles more reactive. This is you, bracing and getting ready to get through the event. In an anxiety disorder, you have your foot constantly on the accelerator. Any situation can become stressful by the way your brain analyse it and adjust to it. Your brain perceives danger in a non-threatening situation or over stimulate in stressful events. This is what happens when you have a panic attack, your body responds excessively to stress. Antidepressants regulate some pathways of this nervous system. It forces the accumulation of certain chemicals in your brain so these nervous pathways are not constantly stimulated. It may help to manage the disorder better. Edit: Grammar, better phrasing. For all the redditors going through anxiety and/or depression: you are strong and resilient, you can adapt to everything. What you feel is temporary, nothing lasts, you are not defined by your diagnosis. Your doctor loves you, has seen you distressed and prescribed you antidepressants and/or anxiolytics to help you get through. If your symptoms or depression longers for way too long or you have difficulty to manage it, please seek help, please see a psychologist/counsellor/GP/psychiatrist. You'll be amazed by what you are capable to overcome. We love you. To respond to some questions and stays in an ELI5: Anxiety is your physiologic response to a stressful event. A disorder is a maladaptive response to what we consider the norm. When you have an anxiety disorder, you chronically react too much or have difficulty to come back to a normal state. Anxiolytics (for benzodiazepines, most commonly used) work on your central nervous system by making your neurons less excitable, this is extremely useful to calm you down during a panic attack or in prevention when you have to confront a stressful event. Your muscles respond less to the accelerator, your heart calms down, you breathe slower, your muscles relax. Unfortunately, this is highly addictive and just treat your physical symptoms. Depression is a low mood state, a temporary inability to feel excited or joy. It is normal to feel that way. What we consider not normal it's when this state last for more than 6 months or is accompanied with worthless feelings and/or suicidal thoughts. Your antidepressants medications will help you having more good feeling molecules in your brain, helping you a get through the rough events you are going through. However, this takes time to have an effect and this will make your brain produce or recapture less of these molecules (this is why you need progressive withdrawal and develop tolerance). Depression and anxiety are commonly seen together. A lot of anxious persons develops depression states or juggle with both disorders. We do not know exactly all the mechanisms, different theories going on. Same with medications, we know half the exact mechanisms of very common molecules on our nervous system. That is why it seems off to put people on antidepressants with chronic pain or anxiety, but we do know there is an effect on the nervous system.",
"Long time anxiety sufferer (GAD), only recently got it under control in my early 20s after exhausting all options before use-as-needed benzos. My self developed abilities to cope combined with this medicinal solution makes me finally feel I have it under control and am no longer running from it. I tried therapy when I was 16 and she actually dismissed me saying everything I was doing to keep it at bay was what she was going to teach me, so it was no help as far as help goes lol. I now survive day by day with my usual coping strategies that are on auto pilot (they basically boil down to thought analysis which ill explain below), and every now and then there will be an event that spurs up more anxiety than usual in me and I take it out with a benzo. > What exactly is an anxiety disorder Some will say chemical balance, but it almost always (in normal people) is the result of a way of thinking you've developed. Imagine your brain as a field of tall grass, there are two cabins (results) you can walk to. If you always choose to walk down the negative thinking path to a negative, often irrational result, it becomes more and more easier for you to think like that next time around because the grass starts to die and the path becomes more defined. Soon enough every thought is taking the pre-defined negative thinking route. This can have a side effect of not only anxiety (by triggering the fight or flight response) but also depression, because you'll see the worst in everything. This negative thought loop is what things like CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) help to correct. **The very short answer to what is an anxiety disorder is that it's an over active fight or flight response combined with irrational thinking**. We often obsess over unlikely things and this is why anxiety and depression will go hand and hand. > Why do antidepressants work on anxiety? Just want to throw in there are actually an equal amount of studies saying SSRI's don't work as there are saying they do. And in the cases where they did work the placebo effect was found to be almost entirely responsible. The data behind SSRI's working suggests that when faced with a hyped up \"miracle pill\" the possibility of getting better through external means is enough to cause them to feel better. *\"Analyzing the data we had found, we were not surprised to find a substantial placebo effect on depression. What surprised us was how small the drug effect was. Seventy-five percent of the improvement in the drug group also occurred when people were give dummy pills with no active ingredient in them. Needless to say, our meta-analysis proved to be very controversial. Its publication led to heated exchanges (e.g., Beutler, 1998; Kirsch, 1998; Klein, 1998). The response from critics was that these data could not be accurate. Perhaps our search had led us to analyze an unrepresentative subset of clinical trials. Antidepressants had been evaluated in many trials, the critics said, and their effectiveness had been well established.* *In an effort to response to these critics, we decided to replicate our study with a different set of clinical trials (Kirsch, Moore, Scoboria, & Nicholls, 2002). To do thi..\"* VERY good read: [NCBI Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect]( URL_1 ) This is important because there is a growing community of victims that now have permanent sexual dysfunction due to SSRI use, known as [PSSD]( URL_0 ). Note that this expands far beyond just impotence, it is coupled with anhedonia which is an inability to feel pleasure mentally. For example, an orgasm (if you manage to get there) becomes just contractions with no release of feel good feelings. There are people who hate them and people who swear by them. It's safe to say at this point we don't really know for sure what we're doing when it comes to serotonin. For a friend of mine the smallest dose (25mg) seems to prevent his random panic attacks. That is just SSRI's though. There are definitely medicines that work for anxiety, and benzos are the holy grail. If you can avoid a physiological addiction they absolutely annihilate all my anxiety for a good 5 hours (for the low abuse potential non xanax/euphoric ones). Usually long enough for me to calm down and think rationally, or do anything in public. They work by temporarily slowing down the rate at which signals are fired in your brain, it is pretty much a sedative. Since those of us with anxiety have racing thoughts this feels like we are now brought to a normal level of thinking. For someone abusing the drug they will feel high. **I want to make it clear to anyone taking advice from this that benzos are one of the most physically addictive substances on the planet. If you do seek them for anxiety treatment I strongly advise a MAXIMUM usage of 2 days on and 5 days off with a wildcard here and there just in case, despite the bottle saying take daily. DO NOT TAKE DAILY, the withdrawal once addicted CAN kill you in rare cases. Also you do not want Xanax, go for a longer acting benzo such as Ativan or klonopin. You will be taking it less often and slow the rate of dependence compared to the euphoric nuke the highly abusive Xanax can give you. (Note: Xanax does have a purpose for sudden onset panic attacks, but it's useless in a fight against GAD)** **I'm not saying benzos are the only solution, they were my last resort. I've been on them for 10 months and with controlled usage I still am not dependent. My bottle has \"take daily\" written on it even though both myself and my doctor agreed I wouldn't be.**",
"I'm a long-term patient/sufferer of a severe/chronic anxiety disorder (panic w/agoraphobia, which I assume is based on GAD because it's been so many years but I dunno). I like understanding things so have asked lots of questions of my doctors and done lots of research. The following is according to my understanding, although as described, I'm not in a position to call myself an expert. **What exactly is an anxiety disorder?** This question has two potential meanings: When do we consider anxiety a disorder? And, what causes anxiety disorders? So I'm going to broach both. **When do we consider anxiety a disorder?** Anxiety disorders are not singular entities. It is not a fact that you either have or do not have one in the same way as you can either have or not have a cold. There is not a single pathogen, or single physical issue, or anything we can objectively see on a scan or in a blood test that can tell us whether you do or don't have a disorder. Instead, anxiety disorders are classified according to clusters of symptoms. The main 'symptom' of any mood disorder is that the mood (whether anxiety, depression, whatever) causes significant distress and dysfunction. So if you're 'a worrier' but it doesn't really bother you and it doesn't mess with your life at all, then depending on country (the US seems to enjoy pathologising from what I see/hear...) a psych is going to be reticent to call that a disorder. Generally, it's only considered a disorder if it's actually causing you pain and holding you back in life. (As an aside, this is not true for ego-syntonic disorders like personality disorders and some cases of eating disorders - e.g. people with anorexia often claim to 'choose' their disorder and do not consider it a 'bad' thing - but when it comes to mood disorders like anxiety, suffering and dysfunction are key). As for the different 'types' of mood disorders, the lines are really just drawn in the sand. That's why many people have a long list of 'disorders', because there's significant overlap and you can fit into many categories at once. People with GAD often experience OCD features. Most people with GAD also have social anxiety. People with panic disorder often have GAD. Most agoraphobics have panic disorder. Most people with anxiety have depression and vice versa. This is because we're not dealing with a specific disease entity here, these labels just describe which symptoms you're experiencing at the moment. **What causes an anxiety disorder?** No one knows exactly. There are many theories. These span genetics, neurochemistry, and social and environmental factors (such as how you were brought up). It is generally accepted that the cause is *probably*, a bit of all of these things, but treatment normally focuses on changes thoughts and behaviours that you have learned in childhood (which have been shown to be a significant factor in either causing or perpetuating anxiety), or changing neurochemistry with antidepressants. Even when it comes to medication, most people agree that antidepressants aren't the 'cure', personal change through therapy is the more sustainable way to recover. Antidepressants are generally seen as a way to stabilise mood so that one can make necessary changes to themselves/their lives to reduce overall stress. **How is this linked to the sympathetic nervous system?** The sympathetic nervous system is activated under stress regardless of whether you have an anxiety disorder or not. The physical symptoms of an anxiety disorder are experienced by everybody under stress, but they tend to be worse with an anxiety disorder simply because you experience them more severely and more often. The sympathetic nervous system governs your fight/flight response. Under stress, all human bodies will go into 'turbo mode' and start prioritising all the systems needed to help you flee danger or fight it. Your blood is directed to your muscles and away from your digestive system and skin. So you get pale/blanched skin; nausea; diarrhoea; vomiting; IBS etc. You breathe faster and your heart beats faster to get super oxygenated blood to your muscles to help them move more quickly. So you feel dizzy, faint, and get heart palpitations and sometimes chest pain (which is actually just muscle pain). With so much energy sent to them and a sudden desire to move, move, fucking move; your muscles tense up in readiness. So you get aches and pains all over your body. You also sweat to cool you down during your flight/fight. So, like I say, everybody gets these symptoms to varying degrees when nervous/anxiety/stressed. But in an anxiety disorder your body is constantly reacting like this and your body isn't really made to be in turbo mode all the time, so you get additional symptoms -exhaustion, fatigue, confusion, brain fog, insomnia etc. Essentially, your body is just *knackered* and it's struggling because it's being pushed so hard. **Why do antidepressants work on anxiety?** No one knows. No one knows why antidepressants work on depression either. They also don't always work, but there's no good way of seeing who they will work for and who they won't. Many people find no benefit from medication; many others find enormous benefit from medication. Some people believe that this may be because of a chemical imbalance in the brain; but another way of seeing it would be that when you are depressed/anxious, your brain creates/reuptakes different neurotransmitters in different amounts. What are depression/anxiety anyway in the physical sphere except a brain process? So it could be that by artificially disrupting the brain process that is triggered by stress/danger, you can reverse engineer the situation so that you 'trick' the brain into behaving as if it isn't under stress/danger. This is already an overlong response so I will stop there. Hope it went some way to answering your question.",
"Some people will take SSRIs for only a period of time until their anxiety has settled, but to have an anxiety disorder, its a chronic imbalance. This can cause everything from stomach problems to pain, overwhelming fear, and so on. My neurologist did a good job of reminding me that when you get embarrassed, you blush, meaning that the blood vessels in your cheeks actually expand. This is just a little explaination of the effect that the hormones which control your \"feelings\" can affect your physical self. I know this isn't exactly answering the rest of your question (cause it's already been answered), but that is really what anxiety is. An imbalance of chemicals in your brain. So any pain or nausea that comes with it, isn't someone being \"crazy\" it's a very real pain. I just went through 6 doctors to find out why I've been having overwhelming pain, tremors, nausea, fatigue, vertigo (and so on),and two years and many ER visits, mris, ct scans, xrays, and LOTS of blood tested, I am diagnosed with PTSD. Turns out that the back of my mind is still processing things that have occured, even if the part of my mind which I can control, feels accepting of the trauma. (This means that I have hormones running through me that are causing damage to my body) the mind is so very weird. I've been on anxiety meds for about 5 years already, and I'm soon going to be on other meds to help with the current situation. I hope this helps to explain anxiety and stress disorders more. I have a genetic anxiety disorder and a stress disorder brought on by trauma. It's crazy stuff.",
"Antidepressants and antianxiety meds work by altering the availability of certain chemicals in the brain, primarily serotonin and dopamine. They do this through chemical action on brain receptors and cells, usually preventing the reabsorption of the chemicals once released, thus increasing their availability. Serotonin and dopamine have roles that play a part in both mood and anxiety levels, so they often work for both mental health conditions.",
"Best way I've heard it explained: Ever play a video game, that boss music starts playing but you haven't seen the boss yet and you get that scared feeling? Anxiety disorder is like walking around hearing that boss music 24/7 but the boss never comes. Anti-depressants turn the volume of that music down to where you can't hear it over everything else.",
"Paramedic/anxiety sufferer here. I see anxiety/panic attacks on a daily basis, and I have a general script I use to crudely explain/understand them. The \"Fight or Flight\" aspect of your nervous system is a highly evolved survival mechanism. The ability to instantly put your body in a ready state to deal with life threats has been a key factor in animal development. However, humans have two traits which have complicated this mechanism. The first is higher brain function. We can form complex thoughts, thus materializing threats and confusing or overloading the reflex. Our ancestors risked becoming the prey of larger carnivores, whereas modern man risks unemployment or losing a parking space....yet our brains perceive those threats similarly. The second is our domain over our environment. We've eliminated large carnivores from the equation. Similarly we've shaped our terrain into (mostly) harmless cities, suburbs, farms etc. Shelter protects us from all but the most extreme weather events. Science has uncovered the mystery of disease. Simply put, the lack of consistent life threatening stimuli has possibly de-calibrated the sympathetic nervous system slightly. (much like some experts suspect \"germophobic\" people have a higher chance to develop allergies due to lack of immune system exposures.) I hope this helps in some respect.",
"Med student here. It's hard to say exactly what causes anxiety but i'll try to simplify it. Your brain runs on many different molecules which regulate function. Of these, there are 3 that among other things, help balance mood and are closely related. These are norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin. Cells in the brain called neurons release these to other neurons to communicate with each other. For example, one neuron would release serotonin and the molecules would attach to receptors on another neuron, causing some effect. Under normal conditions, the sympathetic nervous system regulates the release of these molecules. But in anxiety, it is thought that lower levels of these molecules are released, especially norepinephrine. Lower norepinephrine = lower serotonin. That's why you feel happy after exercising. Your body releases norepinephrine which then causes more production of serotonin, boosting your mood. Put simply, antidepressants reduce the degradation of serotonin after it's release. This causes it to linger around longer, prolonging the effects. Hope this helps!",
"I have OCD, which is an anxiety disorder. Basically, your fight or flight system is not functioning correctly. You perceive danger in social situations or thoughts you fear, that causes your body reacts like its a genuine threat, hence the palpitations and worrying/dreadful thoughts. And while it's not a certainty, antidepressants can potentially fix any imbalance with the chemicals in your brain. In theory, it treats the root disorder more than Benzo medications do. I'm all for people getting help any way they can, but speaking from experience I think Anxiety can be managed with a shift in your mentality... Having OCD taught me that you shouldn't take your thoughts seriously because at the end of the day, they're just thoughts that you ultimately have no control of. Ever since I learned this, I've been compulsion free :) If anyone reading this is struggling with Anxiety or OCD, I suggest you check out a book called \"Brainlock\", it's geared towards OCD but the message in the book can help you with any thoughts that cause you anxiety.",
"Antidepressants are a mixed bag for anxiety. Sometimes they help, but not always, so I'm not sure how to fully address that question. BUT I can tell you what I tell my actual 5-year-old when she asks why mommy is upset. Our brain has many functions in the body, two of which are to regulate our \"stop\" and \"go\" through the use of chemicals we make inside us. Our \"go\" is set off by chemicals that tell us to hurry, or watch out-- like when someone jumps out and scares you. Our \"stop\" is the opposite-- it's when your brain realizes that what scared you isn't actually going to hurt you, or when the danger has passed. Anxiety is when your brain does too much \"go\" and not enough \"stop.\" This could be learned or genetic, but most likely it's both. Some have looked into the idea that it's evolutionary. The most anxious member of the tribe is the first to alert the rest to danger. As for how this is linked to the sympathetic nervous system, I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. The brain is what pilots your entire body, and your systems are heavily dictated by what it processes from the outside world. I might go so far as to say that we have a sympathetic nervous system specifically so our brains can regulate stop and go. (I could be wrong on this, so please correct me if I am.) Could you elaborate on the question? Maybe I can answer it better. (And I'm sorry if any of this seems so elementary that it's condescending. I'm never sure what people do and don't know. I can advance it up if you'd like.)",
"tl;dr We're not really sure. First, I am bipolar and did **some** research on this. Please note that this is not all accurate, but should suffice for a superficial understanding. Some of the older medications, we have a better grasp on: Lithium, for example, is an excellent mood regulator and well-understood and tolerated (Except for the whole liver-damage thing that eventually causes all lithium users to switch) Newer meds are... More problematic. I'm bipolar, and a number of treatments are based on anti-schizophrenia or anti-seizure medications that have been repurposed (very effectively, I might add) for treatment of mood disorders such as bipolar, anxiety, etc. For example, a drug like risperdal is an anti-psychotic, but its exact mechanism to control bipolar in the brain is not well-understood.",
"I have panic disorder and it's absolutely miserable. I've gotten to a place where I understand the biological reasons behind it which can help me manage during a panic attack but it's still very unnerving. I would compare it to the sensation that you get when you lean too far back in your chair and you suddenly feel like you're going to tip but then you don't. Except during one, feel like I'm going to tip for about 30 minutes. And in the course of it I get hot flashes, shaky, nauseous, and the worst is a sense of derealization like I'm watching myself go through it all which makes me feel like I'm going crazy. Then, after about 15 to 30 minutes, it subsides and you're left feeling kind of exhausted from all the physical symptoms. And unfortunately you start to get anxiety relating to the fear of having another panic attack which kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and very cyclical.",
"I'm late to the party here but as an anxiety sufferer I'll chip in. Pretty much an anxiety disorder is a constant misfiring of the fight or flight response, it never truly switches off. This can manifest in different ways, such as an inability to \"switch off\" form work because random deadlines two weeks away have you stressed or the much less fun obsessing over every pain and accelerated heartbeat as a sign of impending doom. The rational brain understands that everything is ok, but the sympathetic nervous system is going to be firing as if there is a problem, and will eventually overpower your rational mind until you are sweating and in full blown panic from some minor issue. No matter what you do, it's nearly impossible to stop it. The antidepressants work by increasing certain \"feel good\" chemicals in the brain, and these chemicals can also block the fight or flight response. In short it allows the rational brain to be able to come out on top of the sympathetic nervous system with a bit of chemical backup, and you can calm down in the same way a typical person would form stress. Living with the disorder is a real bitch that can fuck up your life, and despite what any people say the medication is a true damn lifesaver. I certainly couldn't function in my career without it.",
"You know when you are playing a video game and you hear the battle/boss music start? Anxiety is kinda like that all the time but never being able to find the boss.",
"You know the feeling you get in your chest instantly when you have a close call when your driving? I get that feeling over small things, and sometimes randomly. My antidepressants suppress that considerably.",
"Part of is the connection between the mind and gut. Something like 80-90% of serotonin is produced in the gut. A healthy gut doesnt mean you'll be mentally healthy but an unhealthy gut defintely means you'll struggle with depression and anxiety.",
"Have antidepressant actually been proven more effective than placebo?",
"Antidepressants don’t work as well as everyone thinks they do because we legitimately don’t fully understand how/why they work. There are other ways to treat anxiety disorders other than medication such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) that are highly effective. The problem with prescribing someone antidepressants is that the side effects can be really rough, in fact they are so bad that placebos are better to give someone instead of the actual medication in most cases. It’s been proven that CBT is more efficacious in the long run versus medication.",
"If anyone in here has panic attacks or GAD, I suggest reading \"how to stop worrying and start living your life\" by Dale Carnegie. I used to be on Xanax/Alprazolam after back to back panic attacks which basically made me use up all my FMLA and sick time -and put me into unemployment. However, after listening to the audio book by Dale Carnegie, I really started to apply what was in that book to my life and now I no longer need anxiety medication. As with anything, your mileage will vary, but I can say that it has helped me out a TON. The part about living your life in day tight compartments and completing small tasks at a time is what helped me out the most.",
"To put it simply, an anxiety disorder is when your fight or flight system is pretty much on overdrive 24/7. If there's a mountain lion in front of you looking hungry, your brain needs to decide what to do. This causes symptoms mentally and physically that helps your body react correctly to evade danger or to face it head on. Someone with an anxiety disorder commonly has anxiety/panic attacks, which is basically the mountain lion situation...without the mountain lion. GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) is pretty much a constant state of anticipating the next panic attack which causes general anxiousness. Kind of like a hiker hearing a growl or noise prior to being confronted by the mountain lion, they become nervous and tense, anticipating something is about to happen. That's the analogy my doctor used to explain it to me. Hope it helped!",
"Long term sufferer, I believe it's all a manifestation of what happens early on in life. The building blocks of interraction shape a person for years to come. These can be modified over time to help overcome, yet it's no small task to rewire a brain",
"What what I understand, it has to do with low levels of a chemical called serotonin, and neurotransmitters in the brain misfiring. Anxiety and depression seem to go hand in hand due to having the same cause. Most antidepressants are called SSRIs: selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, so they work for anxiety as well.",
"William Glasser's unconventional take on this subject should be part of this discussion, imo. I'm a fan of Glasser's *Choice Theory* but no expert, on him or conventional psychology. Hopefully a better-informed person can add to this and correct me if I get some of this wrong. Where conventional psychology sees *states*, Glasser sees *actions*. So in many situations where conventional psychology assesses the problem to be an \"anxiety disorder,\" in Glasser's eyes the problem is simply that the person is freaking out. And they're seeking professional help because their approach of freaking out is no longer working for them. One of the links he'd make with the sympathetic nervous system is simply that when one acts in certain ways, it provokes a physiological response. For example, a hypervigilant person always on the lookout for threats may trigger their own fight-or-flight response constantly. One approach is to use medication to treat what conventionally would be assessed as a chemical imbalance or abnormal psychology. Glasser disputes these assessments, arguing that the person's brain chemistry is par for the course *given* that they are conducting themself in a hypervigilant way. For him, the path to treatment involves reconsidering one's approach and finding more satisfying alternatives. The way I'm describing it, it may not be well-received. But Glasser himself had a wonderful way of conveying his views so that his patients felt new options opening for them, rather than a finger pointed at them."
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75otc2 | How does the resonance in a certain room make just a single string of stringed instruments vibrate and get louder and louder? | There's a double bass on the stage. No one is playing it, suddenly one specific note gets louder and louder. I go up onto the stage and stop one string from vibrating. The sounds stops, but a short while later it starts again on it's own | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sound is a wave - a series of compressions (extra dense spots) and rarefactions (extra empty spots) in the air. Those sound waves bounce off the walls of the room, and propagate back into the room, where they overlap with other sound waves. (Mathematically, the overlapping of two waves is called [superposition]( URL_0 ) ) If the peaks and troughs of those waves overlap at exactly the same points in space, they will amplify each other. This amplification is known as resonance."
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75p5n7 | What is the difference between HIV and AIDS? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"HIV Vaccine researcher here. **HIV is Human Immunodeficiency Virus.** It's a virus which infects a certain type of white blood cell (mainly CD4+ T helper cells, but also monocytes, macrophage, and a lot of other cell types as well) making your immune system progressively weaker and weaker. When you lose too many key types of white blood cells (mostly CD4+ T helper cells), you are more susceptible to uncommon infections. **AIDS is Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome**, and is the advanced stage of HIV infection. People with AIDS often see resurgence of chronic infections like Mono and opportunistic infections from stuff you get exposed to everyday like Toxoplasmosis. They also are more susceptible to certain cancers that your immune system otherwise would fight off, like Kaposi's sarcoma. What's worse: Defeating these infections is exceptionally challenging, as the lack of sufficient T-helper cells prevents a strong immune response. Edit: Forgot to mention that there is **Another HIV-induced illness is HIV Neuropathy,** however this is distinct from AIDS in that it is believed to be more an effect of anti-HIV drugs than it is of chronic HIV infection. That being said, the precise mechanisms of HIV neuropathy are not completely understood, so it's still possible that the virus causes or contributes to neuropathy. This manifests in impaired sensation and motor function at the extremities. **The treatment for HIV and AIDS is largely the same**: Drugs which shut down the HIV's ability to replicate, and drugs which boost the immune system to make more T-helper cells. But despite many treatment options, there is only one person currently considered to be \"cured\" of HIV: Timothy Ray Brown had a form of Leukemia that required a bone marrow transplant. He was also HIV positive. Following cancer therapies, it is believed every HIV positive cell in his body was destroyed, making him now HIV negative. He is still on life-long drugs to maintain his bone marrow transplants, but he does not require HIV treatments. **Current research areas to facilitate cure are largely focused on eliminating HIV+ cells**: We have gotten really good at killing HIV replicating cells, but there are some cells that are HIV+ but don't actively produce more HIV most of the time. These are called HIV reservoirs, and we are focused largely on figuring out where they are and how to kill them. **HIV Prevention research** is focused on public health initiatives like condom use, and vaccine research (my area of specialty). To date, there has only been one vaccine regimen to show partial efficacy against HIV infection: the RV144 trial in Thailand, which achieved 32% efficacy over 5 years. Current efforts are underway to test a similar vaccine regimen in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it will be years before we know the efficacy of those trials. Edit: For prevention, there's another vaccine-like strategy also being explored where instead of trying to get the immune system to target the HIV virions, you would reduce the number of immune cells in the genital tract. Upon exposure, the thought is that this would prevent an initial round of immune cells becoming infected and prevent the infection taking hold in the early stages.",
"HIV is a virus, a tangible object. The damage done by HIV to the immune system causes AIDS. AIDS is a syndrome, a set of symptoms of disease.",
"Put simply, HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. You can have HIV in your blood without it developing into AIDS, but this requires a strict regimen of drugs. For an example, consider “Magic” Johnson. Dude has had HIV since the 90s and he's still around.",
"A lot of the answers here touch on the idea, but don't really explain it completely. I studied about HIV and AIDS in Med school, and while I may not know as much as an experienced microbiologist, I can give you the simple explanation. Put simply, HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Your body is a really sophisticated fortress with several layers of defences to govern it. To simplify it, try and visualise a castle on a hill. The hard stone walls and gates are like the skin and your orifices that keep most things out from touching the soft icky insides of you. Imagine blood as the red hooded peasants who carry the necessary wine, food and water needed for the castle to feed its men. The soldiers who keep the castle safe, are your white knights, the men and women known as the white blood cells. They've got their own marching orders, their own specialisations and ranks, and their own commanders, just like a real army. The biggest number of White Knights are your standard foot soldiers. All they have is a cheap white tunic, and they just stab anything that isn't their friend. These are your neutrophils, who respond to the bacterial invaders. Some of these foot soldiers have a little more training, and they can take on virus invaders too, so they're good at killing, and are a separate group of soldiers called natural killer cells. These guys are recruited from the castle's holds and have no proper formal training, so they just respond to everybody the same way without extra manners. They're what you call innate immunity, which along with the castle walls, forms the first line of defense. The next in rank are archers who keep the castle safe by shooting arrows, lobbing rocks and pouring hot oil if necessary, are your specialised B Cells. These guys are a lot fewer, and aside from communicating with the chief castle commander, they prepare immunoglobulins, which are like a circulating stream of arrows that pepper invaders to pieces before they can cause real damage. These guys help in maintaining your immunity, and learn from previous invaders by making special immunoglobulins for specific invaders. That's why you only usually get chicken pox, measles and stuff once in your life, and it forms the basis for vaccination. Now the thing is, the B cells are good at recognising these things, and making defences, but castle resources are limited, so they'll only do it if they get their orders from the highest ranking knights, the T cells. The T cells are of two houses, recognised by their insignia, CD4 and CD8. CD8 are your noble knights, and are amongst the most valiant warriors in the system, each built to counter a specific threat. CD4 are your true commanders, known as the helper cells, and they help give marching orders to the CD8s, the B cells, and also command the entire army to certain areas as needed. Now, the art of war is straightforward. Kill the commander; and the army collapses. The first thing that a virus, or any invader has to breach, is the wall, or the gateway, or the sewer system of the castle if there is one. It needs entry into the castle somehow. HIV is a terrible climber, and can't operate a trebuchet well enough to actually break through skin properly. So it waits for an actual break in the wall to enter the castle, i.e. An open cut, or injury. On top of that HIV is very finicky about travel, so it will only travel in fluids like blood or semen. Once HIV gets in to the castle though. It's a different story. Think of HIV as a demon child. It slips by undetected by most cells, and manages to get to the castle commanders. Once there, it poisons the castle commander, making more of itself, while using the commander's body as a decoy. The other cells are helpless to do much because they can't keep killing their castle commanders. Eventually, once enough castle commanders die, the whole defence system collapses, and that makes it really easy for any invader to get in. These invaders can't get in when the army does its job properly, so they're called opportunistic invaders. It's when these guys show up on the scene that we say that somebody has developed AIDS, that and a lot of other criteria like less than 500 CD4 cells/mm3 and so on."
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75pbio | How do humans and animals produce so much saliva (water) ? | When I go to the dentist and have my teeth cleaned, I produce lots of saliva (you can hear the suction machine extracting it). How do we produce such large amounts of what is essentially water so quickly. Wikipedia references the Salivary gland, however, it does not explain how we can produce so much of it so quickly and explain in simple terms where the water comes from. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The water that comes out of the salivary gland is excreted by the cells in the gland. They are specifically adapted to fulfil that function, just as your heart cells are specifically adapted to contract frequently. The water comes from your diet, and is absorbed from your gastrointestinal tract - primarily by your small intestine. The water then gets absorbed into your bloodstream, and delivered to the parts of the body that require water. In the case of the salivary glands, it will distribute a little extra to ensure that your mouth can continue to process food. After a while of using them, the salivary glands can \"run dry\", because the cells' reserves have been depleted. You then have to wait for a while until the bloodstream supplies them with more water."
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75pks7 | Why does fresh, cold air help with nausea? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nausea is a response to poisons or sickness. Even motion sickness is evolved from the idea that dizziness from poison/sickness triggers some of your body's motion senses but not others. Fresh air where there was none is a sign that you got away from something (poison/rot/disease), and for motion sickness specifically, moving air is another sign you're moving. It doesn't always help, and sometimes only gives some comfort. Think of it like a pro/con list where pro is healthy and con is 'vacate your stomach to be safe.' Fresh and moving air adds to the pro list, sometimes enough to tip the balance, sometimes just enough to help a little. Edit: disease is less likely to survive the cold, so I expect that contributes as well with the cold part of your question.",
"It depends on what causes it. Usually one of two things causes nausea: toxin or imbalance in the ear canal. The former fresh air won't do much for, the only way to get rid of the toxin is to remove it from your system (which is what being sick is for), the toxin can be anything from something you breathed in or, more commonly, something you ate. As for the latter, this is called motion sickness. What dictates your sense of balance is the fluid inside your ear drums. It rises and depletes in response to things like altitude, relative speed etc. The problem is most of this is dictated by what you perceive. Motion sickness is usually caused when you feel movement but can't see it, or see movement but can't feel it. This is one reason why cars actually bump up and down, gliding along smoothly would make you throw up. Some people experience this more than others, from something as simple as cars. Personally I only get it on trains. Essentially, you feel sick because what you see isn't what you feel so your brain decides there must be something wrong. Fresh air helps because it signals the brain that you've stopped moving."
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75plpv | What does the silica packets in boxes of shoes do and why? | When anyone buys shoes, sometimes it comes with silica packets in them. Why? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Silica is highly hygroscopic, meaning that it absorbs water from the atmosphere. It is present in shoe boxes (and in certain dry foods, and other items) in order to ensure the enclosed environment remains as dry as possible, so that the product does not degrade, mould or swell.",
"Its a desiccant. It absorbs water from the air, so that even in humid environments the shoes stay dry. You will find those packets in a lot of packaging for things that get damaged when wet.",
"Silica packets absorb ambient moisture in the air. When you figure these shoes are made in places like Vietnam, Malaysia, and other southeast Asia nations with muggy weather before they're shipped across the Pacific and distributed to wherever, it's a good measure to reduce the possibility of mildew getting into the shoes."
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75pv7t | What does it mean to be non-sentient? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sentience is loosely defined, with a vast number of people disagreeing on both what it is and what is included. The most common definition is the ability to perceive and be influenced by outside stimuli. Basically, the ability to feel (have emotions). This definition would include many animals. Intelligence, self-awareness, sapience, consciousness, and similar words are all variations on a theme. They suffer the same curse of being understood broadly but everyone disagreeing on specific definitions."
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75py20 | Why when pulling an all-nighter do we go through a period where we're extremely tired and if we push through it wide awake? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your body has this thing called a circadian rhythm that tells you when you should do things like sleep. You get sleepy in part because you're tired, but in part because that's when your body is programmed to sleep. Once you pass that time up, you're still physically/emotionally/mentally tired, but you are no longer being pushed to sleep because \"it's time to.\""
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75pzno | What is Fibromyalgia and how is it caused? What are the leading theories derived from studies? | What is Fibromyalgia and what causes it? I know there is no definitive answer that I know of but I am suffering and I'd like to understand what ails me and any way to better deal with it or heal from it. Thank you | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No definitive answers yet but lots of evidence points to genetics right now; how exactly is still elusive as there are many things to look at to discern key causal agents (nerve ending formations, muscle repair mechanisms, degree of sensitivity to stimuli, etc.). What is theorized is that it may be due to people having altered cellular machinery in repairing small muscle damage and this causes small \"micro-tears\" in muscles to persist and cause discomfort. I am not entirely sold on this idea, as an immunologist, mostly because some of the \"related\" disorders (like IBS/Crohn's) are autoimmune in nature, so maybe some degree of autoimmunity is at play? At any rate, nothing is certain yet but hopefully will be sometime in the near future as this is a growing topic of discussion in the proper spheres.",
"Like /u/Flaux454 said, there's no definitive answer. We used to think it has something to psychology and behavior, research has shown it is wrong. Fibromyalgia is a strong response to pain. Meaning a sensation that would be relatively not painful, will be extremely painful. Also, sometimes a sensation that shouldn't be painful at all is perceived as painful. Often Fibromyalgia occurs after trauma, but we are not exactly sure why. One of the leading theories today is something called Central Sensitization. It's not something I can ELI5 easily, but it means that some nerves that communicate with another nerve in your spine are not working as they used to be. Nerves are like gateways, many nerves communicate with the next nerve in line and that next nerve in line \"makes a decision\" if he should transfer a message (to the nerve next in line). Because of damage or maybe because few of them worked overtime, the next nerve in line also shoots overtime. All this extra work over longer periods cause changes in their structures, and this goes all the way to the brain. As for healing, nothing is conclusive yet, especially because we don't exactly understand Fibromyalgia. But a therapy called [Mirror therapy]( URL_0 ) has some evidence as useful. The idea behind it is really interesting, and it involves hiding the painful limb and moving the other limb while there's a mirror reflecting it. Hope I helped clear some things out. Fibromyalgia has lots of focus today on in pain studies. If you are interested in learning more, [This guy]( URL_1 ) is really likeable and he does a lot of research in that field."
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75q02w | How does "thinking speed" differ between groups | Do we all think at the same "speed"? For example, when I think I'm thinking in the language I speak, but does that change based on language or other factors? Also would a disability like deafness affect this since they would likely think in sign language? Or are there significant differences between everyone? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> For example, when I think I'm thinking in the language I speak, but does that change based on language or other factors? The vast majority of our thinking does not involve an internal monologue. An internal monologue is not required for thinking and there is no obvious method by which it would impact the speed of thought; the direction is conversion of thought into language, not language into thought (which would imply your words were somehow magically strung together without a previously existing structure or intent).",
"I'm just throwing this out there, as I'm sure someone can expand on it--im unable to on mobile. Malcolm Gladwell goes in depth on this topic in outliers. Mandarin speaking people's number system is verbalized much quicker than American number systems, meaning that they can remember 10 numbers in a short term memory sequence while English speakers can remember 7. I'm sure this would also tie into the speed at which one thinks, as there are people who have a monologue in their heads, while others don't."
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75qiho | is it possible to see within pixels? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The results you are seeing are errors introduced by the image compression process. Pixel-based digital image files have a maximum number of pixels, and smaller that that there is actually nothing. There *are* images described in ways other than pixels, using math. Some of these can be zoomed into forever, as the computer will construct the missing details on request."
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75qubx | Why do rats get cancer very often? | Domesticated rats, to be specific. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you are referring to lab rats used in cancer studies, then they are specifically genetically created to get cancer. If they don't we give them cancer. Its not a pretty process, but we need to test cures on living creatures, and its a lot of paperwork killing people with failed cures. As far as I know normal rats aren't more prone to cancer than any other rodent/mammal.",
"Rats are genetically predisposed to the development of tumors. In the wild rats don't tend to live long before predators get them, and they produce lots and lots of babies, so the fact that they're super likely to get cancer barely played a factor. Domesticated rats, however, are protected from predators and disease and are given plenty of food, so barring anything else killing them they're almost guaranteed to live long enough to develop tumors. It's sort of like how cancer rates in humans are rising as other diseases are wiped out and our life expectancy goes up so more of us live long enough to get cancer."
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75rcbz | How is it possible to remember entire song lyrics but find it difficult to remember text in other forms? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, for one, by the nature of things you only really only hear the *good* Songs. Meaning only the best artists, with the best access to mass media and equipment took time to pick out only their favorite and likely successful songs that would make it to your ear. So those songs are incredibly well designed to do one thing. *Be memorable*. On the other hand, written information has the luxury of not being memorable. I mean most information isn't even prose. It's literally on the page simply *because* we knew no one would remember it. Having said all that, there is an aspect of human nature as well. We've evolved to be great pattern recognizers. Melody and rhythm, by definition, give us a pattern our mind can anticipate. When you find yourself trying to sleep and you're being distracted by a noise. Pay attention, *why* it's distracting. What you'll realize is that your brain is constantly waiting on that next note of sound to come but it can never anticipate it. This takes your focus off the task and makes you look for the pattern or rhythm in a noise that will never have one. That's why water dropping or white noise from a TV is so bothersome, it's so unnaturally without a pattern. Whereas a fan will eventually lull into a pattern the brain recognizes. I say all this to say that melody and rhythm that lyrics follow usually go along 4 beat or 8 beat patterns. They rarely exceed 10. So these 8 variations of beat are very easy to remember. It's no longer 24 or 30 items, it's now 3 or reputations of the same beat. Your mind was only designed to memorize up to a certain number. Even memorization experts, typically, deploy different hacks and tricks to lower the number of items they have to actually memorize, they pack things together into easier, more digestible groups or patterns.",
"Song lyrics rhyme and have a set pattern. Brains love patterns, because they are predictable. Easier to work when things are predictable, and your brain is working all the time.",
"Music activates several areas of the brain elevating mood and opening more pathways for memory.",
"Everyone's brain works differently. I can't remember song lyrics or foreign languages, but have no problem remembering text, images, etc."
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75rczr | Why do cockroaches always die belly up? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A few things: Healthy bugs are totally capable of righting themselves if they flip over. Insects don't have muscles like you and I do. Their legs naturally curl up, and it's hydraulic pressure (fluid inside) that expands their legs open. So when something ruins that pressure (like being injured), their legs curl up. If that happens on one side first, it can cause the bug to end up on its back from buckling on that side. Lastly, the dead roaches you are seeing are probably poisoned. The poisons we use on bugs cause all kinds of fun things, like spasms, which could also cause them to end up on their backs (and too uncoordinated at that point to right themselves). For-real-lastly, bugs that end up on their backs are the ones you tend to see dead in the open. Bugs that don't end up like this typically manage to hide, and die in peace. Most roaches don't end up on their backs when they die: rather, the ones you find tend to end up that way."
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75rdkh | Biting Nails | Why as humans do we have the tendency to bite our nails when were scared, anxious, or nervous? Is there an animal equivalent? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's some rough equivalents. Birds, for example, will sometimes pluck their own feathers if stressed.",
"I've always seen it as removing factors to a problem. It doesn't directly solve it, but it releases stress when things are worn down. Detrimental but a common human reaction. An extreme to this might be self harm or pushing people away socially when very stressed in life. Gives the brain a sense that there is less to worry about. Even if that isn't very realistic or rational. But what human is 100% rational?"
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75rdl1 | what actually happens to your bones when they crack? | Some are loud, some are quiet. Just wanna know what the science behind it is! | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If your bones crack, you've got a fracture. If you're referring to cracking your knuckles, it's a sudden release of trapped air from your joints",
"Do you mean like cracking your knuckles? Or a bone fracture? Cracking your knuckles or other joints is simply popping air bubbles popping out as the joint is stretched. The volume is directly related to how much air is pushed out and the shape of the joint itself."
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75rhny | the economical advantages and disadvantages of govt funding birth control | Ive heard and read some people go as far to as it is cheaper to have birth control not be funded by the government. Someone please give me the breakdown on how it works, why the government funds it now, and why they are so desired to stop | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Advantage: fewer babies being born means fewer babies that need state support, as free birth control mostly benefits the poor who will need it. Disadvantage: Generally speaking, the more people born today, the better the economy will be in 20 years. Even after you account for the benefits they'll be drawing, more people almost always yields a stronger economy.",
"> why the government funds it now The government directly pays for the healthcare of old people (Medicare), poor people (Medicaid), reproductive planning organizations (Planned Parenthood), and its own employees. The government also sets a lot of rules about how other healthcare works (Obamacare and various other laws / regulations). > why they are so desired to stop This isn't really an economic issue, it's a moral / religious issue. The idea is that birth control enables sexual lifestyles that are (according to some people) morally wrong and destructive to individuals, families, and society. I'll try to objectively describe the mindset of people who oppose government support for birth control. So the judgments of what is morally right/wrong in the following bullet points are what such an opponent might think. This isn't what I personally believe, and it's not some absolute moral truth that everybody should believe. - Many people believe birth control is itself morally wrong. Stopping the creation of new humans is wrong, because humans are a big part of God's plan for the world. This has been a big part of the Catholic religion's opposition to birth control. - Many people believe birth control encourages morally wrong behavior. Sex outside of marriage is morally wrong and destructive to society, and many people get birth control so that they can have sex outside of marriage. The government shouldn't support behavior that is immoral and destructive to society. - The government shouldn't be able to use laws and regulations to force a citizen to violate his/her own personal moral code, especially if that moral code involves widespread, traditional ideas about morality that have long been supported by our society and its major religions. If you own a business or nonprofit organization, and you believe that sex outside of marriage is morally wrong, the government shouldn't be able to force you to pay for birth control for your employees so they can have sex outside of marriage."
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75rkii | How is a timetable for frequent rail service (e.g. the London Tube) made, with trains arriving every few minutes and sometimes different lines? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well they know exactly how long it should take for a train to do the run, how long it is between each station and how long they need to stay at each station. They'll typically measure these numbers and record all of them (for new lines this might be done by running empty trains in pretend service). Then they set a start time and location for a train, and then pick a time after it that gives it enough space (so at the station that takes the longest to load/unload, the train behind it isn't so close that it catches up and has to stop). And they just keep scheduling trains one after the next to get an appropriate number of trains (depending on passengers, money, and number of trains they actually have). They also need to ensure that the shared spots on the line (like tunnels) where multiple lines share the same track are not overloaded, so it's usually these areas that they base the scheduling on (like if the math shows the tunnel can handle 10 trains per hour, and it has three lines, they schedule the three lines so they meet the max number in the tunnel, and select the start times so they always arrive in their \"slot\". In practice, once they have a schedule they really run it, and as people and life changes, they identify things that are under/over utilized and adjust the schedule to match (so the tunnel might handle 10 trains per hour, but the red line gets late during rush hour, so add time to it's schedule and reduce so it don't hold up other trains). Similarly, better tech is installed on tracks so they can fit more trains on it and that too will allow for more trains and requires the schedules to be redone."
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75som7 | (kinda gross) what is pus, and why is it coloured the way it is? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pus is a build up of dead white blood cells as a result of fighting off an infection. It's the color it is mainly because that's just about what color blood cells are, but it's also a lot of dead bacteria that the blood cells killed off as well. which is why pus can be infectious, as the bacteria may not be all dead.",
"Your immune system is a battlefield. Foreign invaders like fungus, bacteria, even a virus or something as simple as proteins from plants and animals can trigger your body to defend itself. The body swarms the area of infection with white blood cells which are like the army swooping in to do battle with an invader. This battle results in dead or dying cells of both the invaders and the defenders and this detritus can accumulate as pus. Sometimes it's absorbed back into the body like through the lymphatic system along with the waste products of cell metabolism. But sometimes it builds up too quickly and gets concentrated in pustules or abscesses which are infected pus filled pockets inside the body or under the skin. The over all color of these cells and debris is white because of the color of the cells and debris that make them up. In the case of acne though it can be a mix of dead skin cells, oil from the skin, and actual pus. Sometimes the dead skin and oils form a plug in a hair follicle or pore and this forms a zit. An abscess is inside the body though so no skin flakes or oil in those, it's almost all blood and pus."
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75t265 | Whyvare some digital watches faster or slower than others? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nothing is perfect, there is always some error. In digital clocks there is a circuit called an oscillator. It's the electronic equivalent of a pendulum, but instead of an object moving the same path at a fixed rate there is a voltage that swings up and down at a fixed rate. This acts as our little electronic clock tick, making a clock work in seconds/minutes/hours is just done by counting the ticks. The catch is that we usually use tiny pieces of crystal as our oscillators. The rate they tick is dependent on the size, shape, and chemical makeup of the crystal. Because these things are built with physical tools that have limits (how pure can you grow quartz, how tiny can you cut it with blades or a laser, how much stress is put on the crystal when you connect leads to it, etc) there is always going to be some error in the specifications and the physical component. Now you can arbitrarily lower that error, it's just a matter of cost. Since most people don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on a clock, we can accept that it will go a little bit faster or a little bit slower than desired. There are digital clocks that are much more accurate than quartz clocks, but again they're extremely expensive and rely on things like radioactive decay."
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75t4nf | Does water in spaceships short circuit anything? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes and no. The vast majority of exposed electronics on the ISS are carefully sealed and protected, just in case there's an inadvertent water spill. The stuff needed to maintain normal function is safe, and so is the really expensive equipment used for experiments. However, there's still tons of traditional electronic equipment up there that could be damaged. Laptops, normal household devices, etc."
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75t6m8 | Can screws/rods that are in your body get rejected? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally they are made of titanium which has a far lower rejection rate than other metals, basically in just about everyone the body doesn't recognise it is there from an immune system perspective. You even get screws nowadays that are made of a material that your body thinks is bone and so is broken down and replaced with actual bone overtime."
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75thfa | How is that extremely spicy foods can cause coughing? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Spicy foods (aside from wasabi) contain a chemical called capsaicin, and this chemical is what we interpret as \"spicy.\" Capsaicin mimics \"heat,\" but it's also an irritant. It activates receptors associated with temperature and pain, and in high concentrations can be damaging to tissue, resulting in inflammation. When your upper airway (throat, mainly) gets irritated, the body's response is to cough, which may forcefully clear the irritant from the body. More broadly, the cough reflex can be activated by any abnormal sensation, including that of capsaicin. Pretty much any strong stimulus will trigger the cough/gag reflex, including pressure (mostly gag reflex), pain, temperature, and even strong tastes or smells. The farther down you travel towards the lungs, the more sensitive the response becomes."
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75tup7 | Can jury nullification work the other way too? As in, is it possible for a jury to purposely convict a provingly innocent person resulting in a legal conviction? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No, not in the same way. When a jury rules a man innocent despite the evidence against him, the state can't do anything about it. The Constitution protects him from being tried again for the same crime. That is what creates the institution of \"jury nullification\"--the acquittal can't be second-guessed. But when a jury rules a man guilty despite the evidence, a judge *can* rule otherwise. If the jury could not reasonably have reached a guilty verdict given the evidence, it will not stand. Even if the trial judge decides against it, the convict has the opportunity to appeal. Jury verdicts are rarely overturned in this way, but the verdict has to have at least some relation to the evidence, unlike with nullification. To be sure, a biased jury or judge can do a lot of harm. There are plenty of cases where, to outsiders, the verdict is questionable. But there is an important conceptual difference.",
"> is it possible for a jury to purposely convict a provingly innocent person resulting in a legal conviction? Not really. Judges have the power to overturn a jury's guilty verdict (but not a not-guilty verdict). Note that this doesn't cause the defendant to be found not guilty. Rather, it results in a mistrial, and the entire trial has to be redone again with an new jury (if the state chooses to re-try the case). And even if that specific judge played along with convicting someone who was clearly not guilty, the defendant could appeal the case to a higher court, and it's not likely that everyone up to and including the Supreme Court is going to be okay with the situation.",
"Can a jury wrongfully convict the defendant of a crime? Sure but they're allowed to appeal. When the jury declares not guilty, the state must stop prosecuting and has to consider the case settled."
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75u4jq | How do computer board designers change and update parts like GPUs and motherboards to be compatible with all types of new and old standards, and make them faster, so quickly? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In a word: Standards. If your part doesn't comply with the standards for that part, it won't work with anything else. Which means nobody will buy it. New standards are sometimes backwards-compatible. Sometimes they are not - so part manufacturers don't *always* make stuff compatible with everything else. Add to that that there *are* companies that just make everything themselves, or have it made for themselves, and don't *care* if it's compatible."
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75u6py | Why does grass look lighter when you cut it one way than the other? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The reflection of light. Most grasses are slightly glossy. If you run your mower one way then make a pass in the opposite direction, it'll seem like the grass is different colors. On one hand you've got all those grass blades pointing at you. On the other you're looking at the sides of all the grass blades thus creating the illusion that the grass is different colors. This effect is popular with baseball fields. All they do is have a big brush and roller on the back that combs the grass down uniformly as they pass over it. Source: I was a greenskeeper at a golf course.",
"Cutting isn't enough; for stripes to form, the mower has to have a roller. That flattens the grass in one way or the other, leaning it over. [This image]( URL_1 ) shows how much the perceived lightness of grass varies by the angle it's at. [This image]( URL_0 ) is shot just close enough that you can see that on the lighter stripes, the grass is leaning away from the camera, the darker stripes aren't. Grass, as /u/MetalisDead has a said, is glossy. When it's leaning away from you, you get the brightness of the sky reflecting towards you off the grass leaves. An interesting thing with grass is that if you look at it from one direction, then look at it from the other, the bright and dark stripes will swap position. What looks dark from one direction looks light from the other, because you're now looking at its reflective side."
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75umhj | The concept differences between weight and mass | I understand one is inertia and I think the other is a force, but I really need this one broken down for me. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mass is how much of a thing there is. Weight is how hard that thing is pulled towards a large gravitational mass. Mass is an inherent quality/information of an object, and remains unchanged regardless of what else it is near. It does play into the inertia. Weight is the force exerted through gravity. Force = Mass x Acceleration. On earth the acceleration due to gravity (g) is 9.81 m/s^2 Your weight would be different on the moon, your mass would not.",
"Mass is a value inherent to an object. It is dependant on its composition. It is, for practical purposes, static. (It isn't literally static; adding energy, through heating and such, changes rest mass. However, the difference is negligible for most purposes) Weight is a function of mass and acceleration. Weight = mass * acceleration. You can lose weight by lowering mass, or by accelerating more or less. For example, a piece of iron with mass = 1kg will weigh more on earth than it does on the moon due to a reduction in gravity, but it's mass will remain 1kg. Fun fact for those who do not know, weight is measured in lbs in imperial units, and mass is measured is slugs. It is important to note that, though most people consider weight as a function of mass and gravity, acceleration due to gravity is indistinguishable from an equal acceleration by any other force. Look up Einstein's equivalence principal if you are interested. Edit: a word"
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75unfd | Why do our ears ring? | ELI5: Why do our ears suddenly ring or get a random high pitched sound for a brief period? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For the last year I‘ve worked in a lab that‘s doing research on Tinnitus, and while no one can actually 100% tell you what it actually is, one of the most likely explanations is, that the hairs in your hear (which vibrate when they get stimulated, which is basically hearing) die, and when they do, sometimes the nerves start to misfire. They go into a mode where they rapidly fire one action potential (which is like small electrical impulses) after another, and it is believe that this is the reason why your ears are ringing. That‘s at least how the professor in the lab explained it to me.",
"[Tinnitus]( URL_0 ) has many causes. It usually is a symptom of hearing loss.",
"My mother suffered for years from this - she’s now got two hearing aids and it’s wonderful that she can hear now! My ears ring a lot, too.....but mine ring whenever somebody talks shit about me."
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75uu79 | What makes non-native English speakers sound foreign when they have good grammar? | By "when they have good grammar", I mean that it's good enough that the grammar itself wouldn't be the tipoff that they're not a native, so what is? Edit: I meant over a text-based medium, so also excluding audio tipoffs. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Native speakers of English tend to use a lot of words and phrases that are native to the region or culture that they learned English in. As an example, a native English speaker from Australia might use the phrase \"they're right cunts\" to describe a group of people that were being unruly, whereas an English-as-a-second-language speaker from Germany might call them \"hooligans\". It's these phrases and words that form the backbone of our language skills. Another easy example would be an American describing a punch from out of nowhere as a \"sucker punch\", but an Australian would call it a \"king hit\". It's the same language but used differently. Depending on where and when you learned the language, your choice of idioms and words will be slightly different, and it is incredibly easy to spot when compared to your own native culture.",
"Pronunciation. They learn English by taking the way their own language sounds, and applying it to English spelling. Often times there's differences in how their native language pronounces a combination of letters, so it translates over when they speak English. English also has certain sounds that other languages don't make use of (and vice versa), so they may have trouble learning them, especially as adults.",
"There are a few things that give it a way. First thing is, native English speakers dont usually speak with perfect English, and to speak with perfect English often doesnt sounds right. People also tend to type as they speak, which again is often incorrect (the pluralisation of you to yous/youse being a common one that I see) Contractions. None native speakers rarely seem to use contractions (its is - it's, will not - won't) which is understandable, but native speakers will do so. Colloquialisms. There are plenty of words that are local to an area or region. Scran - Food, Butty - Sandwich, [Barm/Bap/Muffin/Oven Bottom/Roll/Tea Cake]( URL_0 ) (basically a sure fire way to start an argument in the UK) And finally accent/pronunciation, usually the quickest tell. I remember Portuguese people having an issue with a hard CH sound, always pronouncing it like SH as in Portuguese there are no hard CH sounds. Particularly funny when accusing someone of being a cheat. EDIT: Ignore the last paragraph (just seen your edit) the others still apply.",
"Very few native speakers actually use perfect English. Because we grow up with it, we just kind of absorb it. So we use shortcuts, expressions, varying placement of contractions, etc, etc. Essentially it can sometimes come off as foreign because it's *too* good grammar, rather than feeling natural. It can read more stiffly and not as relaxed, or their word choices might be technically correct but feel off.",
"It's a couple of different things. The most obvious one is the word or phrase you use. For example, I'm Chinese, my wife is Canadian. I tend to say tissue paper, but my wife calls it kleenex which is a brand very common in Canada (probably the whole NA, not sure) and it has basically replaced the phrase tissue paper in everyday language over there. The second is your logic. Yes, language influence the way your think, and it's somewhat hard to change. When you learn and use a new language, even tho you can be grammatically correct, it can sometimes resulting a uncommon way to express certain things. I can't give you any specific example and it's very hard to explain. But once I had to write an article in English and gave it to my wife to see if there's any error or if it can be improved. My wife instantly spot some sentence as being very \"Chinesey\" and they don't usually say it like that. Being a Chinese, I'm very used to imply things in my language, while English is a much more straight forward language. But speaking a new language doesn't change the way you think in an instant. Edit: I would like to point out that the second point I mentioned happens more often with written language. My speaking English is pretty native-like until I need to use an uncommon word that I didn't know or never heard it being said before. Same goes for written language but happens more often, but the degree probably varies from person to person depends on what they do with the language in question. Due to the age we're in, we rarely need to write letters as communication. Letters, even informal ones, has a very different style to it than speaking. For native speakers, this is learned from school. For someone like me, I never really get the chance to read/use this kind of language. Nowadays, when we chat with friends and family, we write as we speak. I almost learned my English exclusively through speaking language (save for the few years from high school English textbooks, which was mostly focusing on grammar rather than actually using it as a language). So when I write something more elaborate than a few line of text, it's very noticeably different.",
"It’s the base sounds used or not used in their native language. I work with a Filipino who doesn’t seem to have a “V” sound in their language so a van is a “ban” a rivet is a “ribbet” I pointed it out to him one day and he thought about it for a minute and agreed.",
"I'm not sure if I've seen this in written English, but I often encounter it in speech... A native English speaker will use a variety of different confirmation queries on statements \"we're going to be late, *aren't we*\", \"it tastes good, *doesn't it*\" But a second language English speaker will almost always use \"isn't it\", regardless of what would best fit the phrase. \"you did your chores, *isn't it*\"",
"Idoms, dialect, mistakes. Perfect Swedish would be: > *Hur gammal är du?* (How old are you?) > *Jag är tsugofem.* (I am twenty five.) In reality it's almost always: > ***Hu*** *gammal* ***ä*** *du?* > ***Jah tsjufem.*** The native says the latter, the foreigner usually the former. Perfect Dutch would be: > *Wat wil je drinken?* (What would you like to drink?) > *Melk, graag.* (Milk, please.) In the Rotterdam region it would be: > *Wat wil je drinken?* [idem dito.] > ***Mellek***, *graag.* [Rotterdammers invent an extra syllable.] In traditional English it would be: > *I asked for a herb, an espresso, et cetera.* In simplified English it is: > *I* ***axed*** *for* ***an erb***, *an* ***expresso***, ***exetera***. (Take a guess as to which of the three examples whips my nae-naes.)",
"One observation I have made is the persons english sounds like their native language. I'm from scandinavia and have no problem identifying danes, swedes, norwegians and finns because their english sounds like their native language.",
"Languages have a lot of little nuances that native speakers don't think about, and these nuances differ (sometimes greatly) between languages. I'll speak to Spanish-native English speakers, since that's what I'm most familiar with. The most common grammatical fuck ups in languages, even for people who know a language really well, tend to be prepositions, because there are no prepositions that translate exactly 1:1 between langauges. As an example, we have *en* in Spanish which, depending on context, can translate to *in, on,* and *at*. So a Spanish speaker might fuck up and choose the wrong one in a context they're unfamiliar with, like they might say, \"I'm in the party\" instead of \"I'm at the party\" which, we still understand, but it's not exactly right. Then there's all the false cognates (words that look similar but aren't, like *exito* which means \"success\"), expressions that don't translate well into the other language (Spanish doesn't have the phrase \"burning bridges\" and they'd look at you weird if you said it), verbs that have a specific meaning in a fixed phrase (until they know better, a Spaniard will probably say \"make/do a party\" instead of \"throw a party\", for example), and lots of other little things that native speakers would never fuck up but aren't intuitive to all foreign-language speakers.",
"I studied dialects and the phonetic alphabet. Do the following: say the vowels a e i o u. Now visualize where the sound is formed in your mouth. A is up just in back of the teeth E a little further back roughly even withe first bicuspid teeth I is on that slope with the ridge down the center - the hard palate O gets made up inside that nice round cavernous part of your mouth, the soft palate U is all the way in the back and you drop the back of your tongue. Got it? Now, say all vowels just as vowel sound sliding from one vowel to the next with \"saying the word\" see how fluidly you glide from one vowel to the next? Really - there are infinite number of vowel sounds, all varying in timbre, made with slightly different tongue position and jaw opening. And so what you really have is the A group, the E group etc. if the standard A vowel sound is different where you grew up you may have real hard time saying the A sound another way because your tongue just doesn't know how to do that. You words will not slide into each other in the same way. Its a mess. And don't get me rolling on all the gimme's, gotchas, g'mornins, and my new fave i'ma (for I'm going to... really?). Guaranteed the last time you heard the \"d\" in good morning the person you were speaking to was not from the USA. If you master the language it can be technically perfect grammar wise but clearly accented in the slightest way, its not lazy or familiar. Its just slightly odd. Humans are weird."
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75uwq2 | When companies/academics do drug research for say an anti-viral drug, where do they start? Do they simply throw a million different chemical compounds at pirti dishes hoping one of them will show dead viruses? How do they narrow down where to start? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You start by studying the virus, and learning exactly how every aspect of it works. How it binds to human cells, how it enters them, and how it duplicates. You figure this stuff out all the way down to the molecular level. Once you've done this, you'll have a bunch of possible ways to kill the virus. The problem is, a lot of them won't be viable. A specific protein might look like a good idea, but it's equally important in human cells, so we can't make a drug to mess it up. You narrow it down to aspects of the virus that are extremely unique, but also crucial for its function. After that, you start using your knowledge of chemistry to create a molecule that can attack the target you've picked. Most commonly you're trying to make something that selectively attaches to the target, doesn't let go, and stops it from working. But **then**, you're faced with another big hurdle. Your drug might do exactly what you want in a petri dish, but that's not the end. Can the human body absorb the drug? Does it interfere with human cells, too? Does it get stuck in the liver and slowly destroy it? Lots of random stuff you gotta figure out and anticipate."
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75uyhw | Why do some games/apps use huge numbers instead of small numbers? | Example: The cheapest item is worth 50,000. I will buy an item worth 50,000 with 100,000. Why not just make it smaller like 500 with 1000? There's no point in using a huge amount of money right? Because you can't buy anything under 50,000. Is this just preference or there's something else? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sometimes it's just to make them feel bigger. It's more satisfying to get a \"Sword of +10000 awesome\" than a \"Sword of +10 awesome\" even if they are exactly the same in relative terms. Another benefit is it lets you have more incremental upgrades. If you have 10 armor the game can't really give you a 1% armor upgrade. Having larger numbers lets the game give you smaller but more frequent upgrades."
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75uyjb | How can taking too many showers be bad for your health? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's mostly just an issue of skin health, rather than something more serious. Your skin constantly produces oil, which acts as a protective barrier from bacteria and excess water loss. When you **don't** shower, that oil can accumulate, and get full of the bacteria. This causes bad odors, acne, and so on. However, when you shower *too much*, you're constantly removing that protective oil layer -- especially when you use soap as opposed to just water. Your skin will become red, dry, and itchy, because it's losing more water than normal. This can also cause acne, because you don't have enough oil on the skin to engulf bacteria. That oil also hydrates your hair and makes it soft. Too much shampooing will make your hair dry, \"frizzy,\" and more likely to break.",
"Although light showers may not do too much to the person, the main concern should be with the soaps/shampoos used during a shower. Those can contain chemicals, and serve the purpose of removing dirty stuff from the surface. & nbsp; Excessive use of these products may make the skin too dry, thus harming the skin itself."
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75uyso | Elements want 8 electrons in their valence shell to become stable. Why do atoms want exactly 8 valence electrons, and why is it impossible to have 9 valence electrons? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The reason is to do with the quantum mechanics of how an electron bound to a nucleus behaves. The electron's wavefunction has to take the shape of a set of mathematical functions known as a spherical harmonics (you can Google these to see what they look like). The reason it's a spherical harmonic is that is has the right spherical symmetry. Spherical harmonics are labelled with three numbers, which are conventionally called n, l, and m, where 0 < = l < = n, and -l < = m < = l. At n=0, the only possible state is n=0, l=0, m=0 (I'll shorten this to (0,0,0)). At n=1, the possible states are (1,0,0) (1,1,-1) (1,1,0) (1,1,1). Electrons have one additional property: spin. An electron can be either spin up (↑), or spin down (↓). You'll hopefully notice at this point that means that for n = 1, there are 8 possible states, the four spherical harmonics * two spins. This is where the number 8 comes from. The 'n' parameter is what chemists would call the number of shells. You'll notice that for n > 1, you'll have even more states available, this is why things start to get more complex. Chemists call l = 0 the 's' orbital, l = 1 is 'p', l = 2 is 'd' and l = 3 is 'f', and the addition of these extra possible states makes chemistry of these things more interesting. You should also note that this structure of states is what creates the shape of the periodic table, getting wider as you go down it; that's all to do with more spherical harmonic states becoming available.",
"> Why do atoms want exactly 8 valence electrons, and why is it impossible to have 9 valence electrons? It's not impossible, and not all elements want exactly 8 electrons in their outer shell. Helium is tiny and can only hold on to two outer electrons. This is because helium doesn't have much positive charge from protons in its nucleus, and can't stably attract more than two outer electrons. After helium it becomes 8 max outer electrons for a while, and eventually 10, 12, and finally 14, which are the heaviest elements. Most of the elements in that big middle block of the periodic table actually want 10 valence electrons, because their outer shell is so spacious that it can accommodate them."
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75v0yv | how do the chips on credit cards provide extra security? | That is their purpose right, to be more secure than before. Additionally, how come sometimes a pin is not required? Without a pin, anyone can use it. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Magnetic stripes are easily duplicated. The information on them is unencrypted and the machines to duplicate them quite cheap. A chip on card is basically a unique encryption key. The reader has an active conversation with the chip to verify the authenticity of the card. Pin not being required has been done largely to reduce the resistance to adoption. It is an additional layer of security that should be used but its absence does not lower it to the simple pinless magstripe transaction as the difficulty of reproducing or emulating an individual cards chip is prohibitive.",
"It's not particularly difficult to take the information from a traditional magnetic strip, and duplicate it in another one. Thieves put fake readers over non-chip credit card machines, save the data from when you swipe (and enter your pin), and then make a duplicate of your card with a perfectly functional magnetic strip. The chip itself contains the traditional magnetic strip, but also a tiny microchip that encrypts the data from the magnetic strip. When the machine reads the chip, it decrypts the data. This means that if someone intercepted that data in the middle, they'd get useless information that can't be decrypted."
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75v1ju | Why does scratching the fork and the knife while cuting food or scratching the fork onto the plate make the human body cringe really hard and feel uncomfortable even minutes after it has happened? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Seems like I saw a suggested idea that the sound is similar to a screeching noise made by predators prehistoric humans may have been hunted by. It was mixed in with that feeling of falling when you are in bed, being another left over from when our ancestors lived in trees.",
"This doesn't happen to everyone. However, I can give myself near instant and very strong goosebumps just by thinking about styrofoam and broccoli squeaking together. Or a LOT of other squeaking noises. Nails on a chalkboard don't bother me, teeth and steel don't bother me. A better, and perhaps more accurate question, would be \"why do we have such strong responses to essentially nonsense?\"."
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75viht | How do we know what colors animals can see and not see? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's not one way to do this, an animal may have all the \"circuitry\" to detect a color but behaviorally don't respond. And then there are some species like cats who were long thought to not have color vision because they were uncooperative. Yes, your cat and dog see color, just not as many as us. Some techniques might be: 1) Genetic - test which genes are present for a particular cone type. We also know that e.g. most mammals have 2 cone types, though they differ in peak wavelength. Only the apes (including humans), old world monkeys, howler monkeys, and certain female new world monkeys have 3 cones. Some mammals, mostly deep sea or nocturnal, have one cone and therefore see in \"black and white.\" 2) Chemical - test which opsins are present. 3) Spectral/electrophysiology - test the response of the retina to a range of wavelengths. Test the vision areas of the brain in a similar fashion. 4) Behavioral - show an animal 3 lights, 2 of which are identical. Train them to pick the different one and reward them until they are good at this with easy stimuli. Then try stimuli that are closer in appearance or known to be confused by color deficient humans and animals. Repeat with a wide range of colors."
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75vm89 | if the immune syatem attacks/kills foreign bodies, how is it possible that bacterias are thriving in our bodies in great numbers? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most of them are in the digestive system, which is more or less outside the body. There are defenses against bad gut bacteria, but if everything is working properly, the gut bacteria are separated from most of the immune system. There are also bacteria on your skin and in women's' vaginas. They are also separated from most of the immune system. If any bacteria get on the inside of your body, through a cut in your skin, or a perforated bowel, for example, then your body goes into overdrive trying to kill them. There are a few exceptions to all this, but this covers 99.999% of all bacteria in your body."
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75vq38 | do screws used in surgery truly turn to bone? If so, how? | If one needed surgery on their knee and they used screws to hold it together again, the doctor mentions that it is undetectable by metal detectors and will turn to bone eventually. How does this happen, if that is at all accurate? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a type of surgical screw that is made from polylactic acid and hydroxylapatite. The polylactic acid will slowly dissolve into your body and disappear leaving behind the hydroxylapatite which is a main component in your bones. In time your body will \"fill in the gaps\" left by the polylactic acid leaving you with essentially a bone plug instead of a hole where the screw was. This is quite an upgrade from previous technologies which generally required a second surgery to remove the screws after you had healed.",
"Most medical screws and fixtures are just metal. It's cheap and easy to use. There ARE degradeable mineral-based screws available. These screws are made of *hydroxyapatite* which is the same mineral your body makes to make bone tissue, so on a molecular level it fuses with bone and as bone tissue in constantly being broken down and reassembled on a microscopic scale, the hydroxyapatite screws will eventually be gone."
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75vsoj | Reproduction - how can two parents, who both have their own unique genetic composition that stays the same throughout their entire lives, can develop children where each one may have their unique genetic combination too? | My biology teacher said that it is a combination of probabilities and chance and used to call it like the game 'Battleship' The more the ships are further apart *(the lack of similiarities of the two alleles)*, the more chance for you to find them *(lower probability for the genetic combination to occur)* and if you hit one, you are mostly lucky *(by chance)* The closer the ships are *(similar genetic combinations or better likelihood for a certain genetic combination to occur)* the more likely you are going to hit them *(the more likely that that genetic combination occurs)* And of course, dominant alleles - more dominant or likely to be the visible phenotype or genotype of the individual | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The children inherit genes from both parents, and it's random which parent they get each gene from. So each one gets a unique combination (except in the case of identical twins). Also there will often be some mutations, usually nothing that has any noticeable impact."
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75vtlm | How can wrist-scan age tests determine your age? | I've read that FIFA is able to judge person's age with more than 99% certainty from wrist-scan test. What's the process behind that, how do they determine the exact age? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Since the auto moderator won't allow an efficient answer here's a slightly longer one. They can't. Wrist scans are discredited everywhere. You can't tell the difference between a 17 year old and an 18 year old via a wrist scan. You can't even tell a 15 year old or a 19 year old. You can determine whether the bones have finished growing, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, being 18 or not is only loosely correlated with that actually happening. We all knew people who were done growing at 14 and people who were still doing it at 19 so this shouldn't be a huge suprise. There are doctors who will insist they can do this for money, but they are lying, as at FIFA. FIFA doesn't care though. They care about the appearance of a fair competition so false positives are fine by them.",
"I researched a bit and found this: From this [source]( URL_0 ) > X-ray images of the growth plate of the left wrist have been used in court and paediatrics to determine age for decades. The growth plates of the bones of the human skeleton are open during growth, and close at different times with increasing age and maturity. > In close collaboration with the AFC (Dr Gurchuran Singh), CAF (Dr Yacine Zerguini) and CONMEBOL (Dr Raul Madero), F-MARC performed MRI scans of the wrist in more than 500 football players of different ethnical origin (Switzerland, Malaysia, Algeria, Argentina, Senegal), all aged between 14 and 19 years and with confirmed birth certificates, and developed a six-point grading system for the fusion of the growth plate . It was established that in a normal population, complete fusion is very unlikely to occur prior to 17 years of age. In fact, the probability is less than 1%. In other words, if the MRI shows complete fusion of a player´s wrist, this player is older than 17 years with a certainty of more than 99%. It appears to look at the growth plates of the wrist, and people under 18 appear to have specific indicators than people 18 and above. However, there isn't a 100% sure way to count the days a person has been alive, obviously a person could be 17 years and 364 days old, and technically qualify, whereas a person who is exactly 18 years old cannot, but under the MRI will show basically the same results."
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75w44z | How do small animals not get hurt by rain drops? | For humans which are large the rain drops must be nothing other than slightly annoying, maybe slightly painful on a very rainy day. But how do small animals not get hurt by water drops that are fairly large hitting them? it would be akin to us being pelted with hail or something? I get that they could hide it out but what about places where heavy rain is expected and almost constant? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[This was actually posted on r/askscience a few years ago. Here was the top reply:]( URL_0 ) Have you ever wondered what happens to mosquitoes in the rain? A raindrop is, like, 50 times heavier than those little suckers. So getting hit by one has gotta hurt, right? Well, not so much. Because researchers at Georgia Tech have found that the bugs are so light, speeding water drops simply brush them aside, without imparting much force. The results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Andrew K. Dickerson et al., \"Mosquitoes survive raindrop collisions by virtue of their low mass\"] Previous studies have shown that precipitation can be a real pain for lots of winged critters. Bats expend twice as much energy flying through a storm as in clear skies. But what about bugs no bigger than the raindrops themselves? Researchers used high-speed video to watch mosquitoes wingin’ in the rain—well, through a spray of mist in the lab. They saw that when a skeeter and a water droplet meet, the insect basically hitches a ride for a bit before peeling away off unharmed. So the bugs go with the flow and offer little resistance. And the drop slows only slightly, keeping its kinetic energy rather than blasting the bug. So for storm-trooping skeeters, resistance is not only futile. It’s all wet. --Karen Hopkin",
"Lots of talk of arthropods and such, with some good references, but that's kind of missing several important factors. It's easy to intuitively think of raindrops hitting small organisms as being equivalent to cinder blocks falling from the sky and hitting us, but that's not how it plays out. [Raindrops are not moving very fast, nor are they heavy]( URL_1 ). For a raindrop to be considered a raindrop it has to be between roughly .5mm - 6mm (about the size of a fly at the largest). A big raindrop has a terminal velocity of about 10 m/s (20 mph), with smaller drops down closer to 0.9 m/s (2 mph). That's basically to say that there isn't much energy in any given raindrop to do a lot of damage with. Another part is that smaller creatures are quite strong and tough as a result of the [Square-cube Law]( URL_0 ). This is why an ant or a spider is proportionally so strong and an element of this is why a mouse generally won't fall fast enough to get seriously injured whereas a horse or an elephant will splash from a long fall. Also why a raindrop falling on a shrew or a butterfly isn't the equivalent of a cinder-block falling on a human. Raindrops can certainly hinder small organisms, but that tends to be more an issue of surface tension, heat loss, splashing and water flow, and things like that rather than the actual impact of the water droplet. For many flying organisms *fog* (and, to a certain degree, drizzle) is actually much more difficult thing to deal with as the tiny water droplets are suspended in the air and they accumulate on the surface of the flying organism, adding a lot of weight. This is why you usually don't get mosquitoes buzzing about when it's foggy.",
"everyone in this thread is talking about insect, but there's a bunch of animals inbetween tiny mosquitoes and humans does a leaf frog get hurt when a rain drop hits it?",
"Physics doesn't scale up and down like you think. Elephants are the biggest land animals. Have you ever seen one jump? Elephants are heavy enough that they could do serious damage to their bodies by falling a few feet. In a similar vein to this, think of a beetle falling off a skyscaper. Does it hurt to hit the ground? Maybe... but they just weigh nothing, so tiny creatures like this have very little to fear from heights. Even at their terminal velocity (the fastest speed they can fall with wind resistance), they may not have enough inertia to do damage to their body. We've all tried to slap a fly out of the air-- it must be like getting hit by a freight train for that fly, right? Not really. We are surprised to see them fly off, unphased. This is also part of the reason why toddlers bounce, and adults break things-- adults have four times the mass behind them when they crash into something or fall off their bike. Anyway, it's tempting to think about this question in terms of scaling raindrops up to the size of excersize-ball sized water balloons, and \"wouldn't it hurt if...?\" but this is simply the wrong approach to the problem. Related reading about the square-cube law: URL_0",
"Kurzgesagt has a great video on this URL_0 The Size of Life explains the difference the world has on smaller beings vs larger entities.",
"I don't think it hurts them at all. You can fling a bug or ant across the room, the equivalent of us falling off the Grand Canyon or jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, and yet they land and continue about their business. A bit off topic, but this has always fascinated me. Hurricane Camille hit our area back in 1969. It's been said that it was the highest saturation of rain ever recorded. That birds and other animals outside drowned b/c they were unable to breath through the massive sheets of rain coming down. From Wikipedia: There, rainfall was so heavy that reports were received of birds drowning in trees, cows floating down the Hatt Creek and of survivors having to cup hands around their mouth and nose in order to breathe through the deluge. So much rain fell in such a short time in Nelson County that, according to the National Weather Service at the time, it was 'the probable maximum rainfall which meteorologists compute to be theoretically possible.",
"How do humans? Umm OP appears to be an alien doing research.",
"> For **humans** which are large the rain drops **must be** nothing other than slightly annoying Nice try. Back to /r/totallynotrobots with you.",
"This is what kills me about the old scale tests in mythbusters I mean they understood some science and they never masqueraded as full-fledged scientists, however the scale tests always counted on \"well we threw this scale car at the wall at 30mph and it didn't break, so that means a full size car made of the same material will do the same\". Or \"we tried to start an avalanche on our scale test using a megaphone, which to scale would have been the size of half the mountain, now oddly enough we can't replicate the scale test with a real mountain and the same sized megaphone from before\". Anytime a scale test was involved my brain checked out and drove off for the rest of the episode because they would crutch everything on the idea that everything scales uniformly regardless of stress, energy, resistance, terminal velocity, mass. It just devolved into pseudo science.",
"Small insects sometimes face drowning of they become stock in a water droplet and can't break through the surface tension. Ants have tiny hairs around their body to help prevent this.",
"Remember that something can only hit you with as much force as you're able to hit back. That's why even a champion boxer won't be able to punch through a piece of paper floating in the wind - there's not enough resistance in the piece of paper for the punch to connect with. It's the same idea with very small insects. If they do get hit with a raindrop, the energy transferred to them is limited by their extremely small weight. So long as they're able to get away from the raindrop before it hits something heavier (like the earth), they'll be fine.",
"Basically it boils down to physics. Bugs have a hard exoskeleton to protect them because as things get smaller, the world around them changes (ie. Air density). [I'm not good in explaining this, but hopefully this video from kurzgesagt can help]( URL_0 )",
"What about bumblebees and other critters that aren't either way smaller or way larger than a water droplet? I can envision a bumblebee getting hit by a water droplet dead center and the droplet breaking apart (like when it hits a human being). Would the bumblebee just lose some altitude and buzz on like nothing happened? In general, what does a creature that's only marginally larger than a water droplet (but just massive enough to not be brushed aside by it) experience when hit?",
"They dont die when you smack them out of the air. why would rain, which is much softer and much less mass than your hand, hurt them?",
"It has to do with the ratio of the animals volume to their surface area. Tiny animals have a huge volume compared to their surface area. Look up Kurzegast on YouTube for a more detailed explanation. Edit: huge surface area in relation to volume, sorry I messed up!",
"They sometimes do, but consider the difference in outcome when a larger animal falls from 10 feet vs when an ant falls from 10 feet. the fall might kill a large animal, but the ant will be unharmed. I'm not enough of a physics expert to explain in detail why this is, but I believe the same principle would answer your question.",
"Not about rain, but in terms of falling I think i read that they were gonna drop some ants off the empire state building to see if they died but by the time the elevator reached the top they had all been killed by the change in pressure.",
"The short answer is that the smaller you are the more sturdy your body becomes. The reason ants can lift 10x their body weights is because of that. Think of it this way: the shell of an ant is not order of magnitudes thicker than say the thickness of a zeppelin or regular balloon. But you might be able to put a lead ball on the body of an ant without squishing it, yet won't you won't be able to put a soccerball-sized lead ball on a zeppelin and expect it to withstand it. It has to do with force distribution when you go down in size. Going 4x smaller ends up giving something like 2x decrease in the durability of the spherical object.",
"When I was a kid I was disturbed because it rained one day at my church and when I walked out the front door that morning after service, the sidewalk was covered in dead, rain splattered earth worms. I was told that the rain had caused the ground to vibrate and push the worms out of their holes. They tried to run but got basically bombed to death by rain drops.",
"Okay this is more like Explain Like I am at a Graduate Seminar. J.B.S Haldane's famous essay on this topic referenced: URL_0 Link to actual essay: URL_1 My favorite quote by Haldane (a loose quote here presented): \"Not only is the universe stranger than we suppose. It is stranger than we can suppose.\"",
"So one of the things that isn't really being answered, but is still being questioned by people here, is a question based around a fundamental misunderstanding of how our understanding of the way the world is experienced is almost nothing at all like the way the world is experienced by very small or very large creatures. The easiest ELI5 explanation for that part of it is [a small, cute, yet very informative]( URL_0 ) video by Kurzgesagt. The way you think of the world and how physics and your environment work are unique to us. Small animals don't experience the world only in a scaled-down version of the way we do, it's vastly different and weird, just like how we don't experience the world the way, say, an elephant does."
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75w6xd | How does a wind turbine contribute co2 to the environment? | So I've been looking at the gridwatch website for the UK and noticed that wind turbines contribute 11g/kWh of co2 to the environment. Contributing 64 tonnes per hour. How can a wind turbine contribute co2 when it isn't burning anything? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The generation of power from wind power plant does not generat CO2. But the manufacturing and building of wind power produce CO2. The importerat value is the CO2 emissions from the whole life of the power plants not only the current emission from burned fuel when producing power. Hydro, Nuclear and solar power also have calculated CO2 emissions even if the done burn any fule (that contains carbon) This is the same reason that you might not reduce you carbon footprint if you buy a electric car/fuel efficient car if your current car works car. Both will result in CO2 in the production and the total amount might be smaller if you keep you existing car especially if you driving is limited. But if you have to by a new car by a fuel efficient car EDIT: The car example is edited"
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75wtwo | When consuming hot sauce why does it get hotter by adding more hot sauce? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Dose makes the poison\" - Paracelus Your body responds to quantities of things. It has a chemical response based on how much of something it detects entering your body. The more spicy sauce, the more spicy reaction.",
"The same reason that adding more salt makes things taste saltier and saltier, and adding more sugar makes something even sweeter. The more taste receptors that you stimulate, the more intense the taste will be"
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75wuyl | Not feeling hungry while hungry, instead, head starts hurting. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is actually an explanation for this. All your brain gets is signals without mich further information. So it must decide what problem to fix first. Now there is an alarm for hunger and pain at once. Worst case for hunger is starving. That takes about three weeks. Worst case for pain is fatal injury. That can take mere minutes. So obviously we need to work on that first. Force a decision for a course of action from the conscious part. Make the pain worse while subduing the hunger. That's a really bad spiral if you have a headache from dehydration."
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75x2b9 | When one drinks a glass of water, how is it absorbed into the human body? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So the liquid you drink will eventually enter your blood (as will the food that gets broken down and absorbed. The rest will come out as poop). Once it's in your blood, it will pass through the liver first (with the rest of the food), then will go to the heart and circulate everywhere like normal. Let's say you drank a LOT of water at once. This causes an issue because your body is very particular about maintaining its salt concentration. So now your kidneys will increase its ouput so that the salt concentration stays normal. (Note that this is why IV is usually given at 0.9% NaCl, so that your body doesn't immediately kick out the fluids) Another mechanism that will increase your urine is if there is too much blood volume or pressure. If the heart has to expand too much, it will release signals (ANP/BNP) that tell the kidney to increase output as well. There are plenty of other mechanisms, including sensors within the kidney that detect BP, to either increase or decrease urine output. Some of the water you drank may come out the next time you pee. Other parts will float around in your blood for much longer."
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|
75x307 | Why do some people feel temperature differently to others? | Example: A classroom at 21 degrees celsius. The boys are all feeling hot but some girls are complaining that it's cold. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9p839"
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"text": [
"The major factor here is how active your thyroid is. Thyroid hormone has many functions, one of which is to increase metabolism. Increased metabolism causes your body to passively burn more fuel (sugars, fats) to generate energy (ATP), and this process produces heat. With this in mind, men tend to have higher thyroid activity than women. We don't feel as cold at a given temperature because we're usually generating more internal heat than girls are."
],
"score": [
3
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"text_urls": [
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} | [
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75x77i | Why does it not get dark before a snowstorm like it does before heavy rains? | It gets beautifully and ominously dark when clouds bearing rain move in. However the same does not happen before heavy snow and in fact it remains fairly bright all through? Why does this happen? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9lscd"
],
"text": [
"Snow itself scatters a lot of light, and can brighten the interior of the storm system significantly. Snow systems are also usually a different type of storm entirely, generated by lower, longer, flatter cloud systems. Pounding summer rains are generated by towering cumulonimbus clouds that are several miles tall. That immense cloud structure casts a dark shadow, but these clouds require a lot of ground heat to form and are rare in colder climates."
],
"score": [
6
],
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} | [
"url"
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75xbvo | How does a seemingly healthy symptom-free person get diagnosed with a terminal “Stage V” cancer and be given a few months to live? | I just don’t understand how given the advance-stage of the cancer, someone wouldn’t be suffering debilitating effects. Or does cancer not manifest itself until the later stages? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9m1uy"
],
"text": [
"> Or does cancer not manifest itself until the later stages? Cancer staging varies with each type of cancer, but is generally based on how much the cancer has spread. The aggressiveness (how readily it gets into different organs) and how early you get symptoms totally varies with each type of cancer. These two factors aren't necessarily related, and influence how treatable the cancer is. A lot of the leukemias, for example, can be caught earlier because they affect your blood so significantly that it's very obvious and alarming. They also tend to take longer to metastasize, which helps. Pancreatic cancer can also have early symptoms, but is considered one of the deadliest cancers because of how aggressively it spreads to all the nearby organs in your gut. Other cancers, like the ones you alluded to in your question, don't cause any alarming or noticeable symptoms in the place where they originate, and are only discovered once they've moved all over the body."
],
"score": [
4
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75xd5j | The Linda Problem | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9mazo",
"do9mc7r"
],
"text": [
"The problem is stated as > Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. > Which is more probable? > 1:Linda is a bank teller. > 2:Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement. Most answer 2 but 1 is more probable. To take the explanation from wikipedia > For example, even choosing a very low probability of Linda being a bank teller, say Pr(Linda is a bank teller) = 0.05 and a high probability that she would be a feminist, say Pr(Linda is a feminist) = 0.95, then, assuming independence, Pr(Linda is a bank teller and Linda is a feminist) = 0.05 × 0.95 or 0.0475, lower than Pr(Linda is a bank teller). The problem is that we are bad at thinking about probability. 2 can never have higher probability then 1. \"is a bank teller\" have the same probability it both statement and a extra criteria can never increased the overall probability. At the most the probability of \"is active in the feminist movement.\" is 1 and that will result in both is as likely. Any probability < 1 will result in 1 being more probable It would be different if \"and\" was replaced with \"or\"",
"It is pretty simple, when you attach more conditions to a statement, it can't become *more* likely to be true than before. **Linda is both X and Y** can never be more likely to be true than **Linda is X**."
],
"score": [
9,
8
],
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} | [
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|
75xic1 | How do workers get the last crane off the top of a skyscraper when they finish building it? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9q3lp"
],
"text": [
"The cranes that actually sit on the building itself? Well, there are two kinds of those. So-called \"skycranes\" are actually lifted in via helicopter. Those will be removed in the same way. But \"internal climbers,\" which are located in the center of the building and \"climb\" up a few floors at a time on a hydraulic lift as the building is constructed? Well, when the final floor is finished, the crane will raise components to build a temporary scaffolding to support itself. This permits the removal of some of the very large components on which the crane usually rests, e.g., the hydraulic lift, steel beam supports, etc., which the crane lowers down to the ground out the outside of the building. Once that is finished, the rest of it is then disassembled and sent down the construction/freight elevator."
],
"score": [
45
],
"text_urls": [
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} | [
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|
75xl0v | If you roll down a hill or are in a car crash you become incredibly disoriented until you've collected yourself and find which way is up. If this happened in space, what would be your reset to stop feeling so disoriented? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9r2pv"
],
"text": [
"Visual cues, basically. Check out this [description]( URL_0 ) by astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent almost a year on the ISS: > I would wake up convinced that I was upside down, because in the dark and without gravity, my inner ear took a random guess as to how my body was positioned in the small space. When I turned on a light, I had a sort of visual illusion that the room was rotating rapidly as it reoriented itself around me, though I knew it was actually my brain readjusting in response to new sensory input. The organ that provides the \"sensory input\" of balance, acceleration, and orientation is the [vestibular system]( URL_1 ) located in the inner ear. You get disoriented when the cues from your vestibular system suggest you're moving one way, but the cues from your visual system tell you something different. Your brain is used to interpreting cues from your vestibular system under Earth-normal gravity conditions. It can take quite a while for it to adapt to different gravity conditions, but it happens."
],
"score": [
8
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[
"http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/astronaut-scott-kelly-on-the-devastating-effects-of-a-year-in-space-20170922-gyn9iw.html",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_system"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
75xo7r | How do testicles make sperm? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9or46"
],
"text": [
"[This diagram can show what I'm talking about better than I can explain it, but I'll give a super basic answer]( URL_0 ) Basically, your testicles contain stem cells, which can continuously divide to produce sperm. The stem cell divides, and one of the two new cells is activated to become a sperm, while the other one stays. From there, this little baby sperm goes on a journey through various parts of the testicle and associated tubing, where it slowly grows into a mature sperm cell and gets put in storage until it's eventually called to action."
],
"score": [
14
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"text_urls": [
[
"https://media1.britannica.com/eb-media/49/135449-004-F2AB0A3F.jpg"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
75xy7t | Why does coughing sometimes make you vomit | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9rm53"
],
"text": [
"Coughing and gagging have the same goal in mind, which is to clear something unwanted from the airway or esophagus, respectively. These two \"tubes\" only separate from each other down a ways in your throat, where higher up they're a single tube. Even after they separate, they're close together for a bit. As a result, anything that agitates the common tube can set off either reflex. The gag reflex is more responsive to pushing/stretching, where the cough reflex is sensitive to light touch or \"scratching.\" When you cough really hard, over and over, you're somewhat violently moving the throat, be it with forceful air or contraction of the muscles. This can set off the gag reflex, which might make you puke. Also, if you're really hacking up a bunch of mucus, it can inadvertently clog up the esophagus and make you gag."
],
"score": [
12
],
"text_urls": [
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} | [
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|
75y081 | Why isn’t our pee coloured after drinking certain drinks? | Can someone explain why our pee isn’t coloured after drinking certain drinks I.e Black after drinking Coke, Orange after Fanta etc. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9rgsr"
],
"text": [
"> Can someone explain why our pee isn’t coloured after drinking certain drinks I.e Black after drinking Coke, Orange after Fanta etc. The bladder does not connect directly to the digestive system. Fluids are absorbed through the intestines into the blood stream which and then things are filtered out of the blood by the kidneys and deposited in the bladder. There are many steps along the way where a dye might not be absorbed or would be broken down."
],
"score": [
3
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} | [
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75y41i | How is language taught to people who never learnt a language when they were younger without a base language to relate back to? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9slm8"
],
"text": [
"Well, it's **attempted** using pictures to accompany words, but it doesn't work very well. Historically there's been cases of extreme child abuse/neglect, in which children have made it to various ages without ever hearing or seeing language. Younger children make decent progress, but those rescued at 9 or 10 never become truly competent at any language. Many of those kids end up getting stuck with something you might compare to caveman speech. They never learn any complexities, and tend to be limited to single words, incomplete phrases, and pointing."
],
"score": [
18
],
"text_urls": [
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]
} | [
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|
75y55w | Why can't pilots see when a laser hits them? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9tosb",
"do9ushm"
],
"text": [
"Lasers spread out the farther they travel. That \"tiny dot of light\" isn't so tiny after it travels 1000 feet through the air. If it hits the plexiglas cockpit window, it diffuses out even more. The result looks [something like this]( URL_0 ). You're right that it only flashes for a split second, but that's all it takes. When people say that it blinds pilots, it doesn't mean that the laser is burning out their retina and causing permanent blindness. They're talking about *flash blindness*, the temporary dazzling effect you get when a bright light flashes in your eye. Like when someone uses a camera flash in a dark room, and you have to blink away the aftereffect for a few seconds? Imagine trying to land a plane during that.",
"I’ve been lasered a few times, with varying degrees of shittiness. A couple times a minor nuisance. One time in particular it did temporarily blind us. The laser hits the window and lights up everything. Can be disorienting as well as temporarily blinding."
],
"score": [
22,
7
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"text_urls": [
[
"http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/insert_main_wide_image/public/second-pizza-gif.gif"
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|
75y8uw | Why do men and women look so mature in the 20th century despite being late teens/early twenties compared to now? | Looking through my parents college albums I’ve noticed a lot of of men and women my age look a lot more mature than a majority of the people that go to my university | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9vdi7"
],
"text": [
"One thing to consider is that photography used to be expensive and inconvenient. Adjusted for inflation, a very basic camera was ~$300 and buying and developing a roll of film (24 pictures) was about $40. When you eventually got around to developing those pictures (which was often never), you got paper pictures you couldn't retouch, maybe 2 or 3 were any good, and then you put them in a box and maybe looked at them a few times a year. That meant two big things. People took photography a whole lot more seriously, and wealthy families (which skews conservative) took most of the pictures. Pictures were often an event, and even in casual shots, it was often, \"clean up, comb your hair, put on a clean shirt, mom is going to be taking pictures\"."
],
"score": [
3
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} | [
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75yb2u | Why are pain meds like vicodin so much different from OTC drugs like ibuprofen? | Why are stronger pain meds more likely to affect you mentally, and they have warnings against operating machinery, driving, etc, but things like ibuprofen and aspirin don't affect you the same way? Do all pain meds work the same way? Is Vicodin or codeine basically just like taking a ton of ibuprofen? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9u7f1"
],
"text": [
"They affect different chemical receptors. Vicodin, codiene, morphine and other opiods/opiates have an effect on dopamine production/receptors in the body which are also responsible for \"good\" feelings and can suppress the feelings of pain. Ibuprofen and other usually just effect dilation of blood vessels allowing for swelling to be reduced and the body to help start the healing process. Vicodin and other pain meds usually have ibuprofen in them, but not the other way around."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
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} | [
"url"
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75ykoc | Why after one receives a shot (to the arm, for example) makes the insertion area/muscle sore? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9xp77"
],
"text": [
"It depends on the injection. Some have a large volume which will cause discomfort. If it is an immunization it could be do to the adjunct, a word for a liquid mixed in which increases the immunization effect. It could be due to a local response to injection of foreign bodies into to your body. Your body tends to react to foreign substances injected into it. It could be due to other components of the injection. If it is a killed virus or live virus injection then the virus was grown in living tissue, most likely in chicken eggs. You may react to remnants of the egg."
],
"score": [
3
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} | [
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|
75yltj | How do you “crack” a game? Why can’t you just send the files of the game to someone so they can play it? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"doa0ahn"
],
"text": [
"Developers of games and other software don't want people to buy one copy then upload it online and have everyone else use it. To prevent it, there may be a number of different techniques implemented in the software that only allows the software to run under certain conditions. Older games required the physical CD to be in (and in a portion of the CD that wouldn't be copied to disk by default). Even older games required some line of text from the user manual to be copied. Newer games tend to rely on online registration of some sort. Crackers take the software and decompile it. That is, they recreate the original source code from the compiled machine code. They proceed to scan through the software and remove the various checks that validate it. Then they recompile it, resulting in a program the does everything the original does without the check. This whole process can be quite complex, especially if the developers purposefully obfuscate the code (ie. make it more complex than necessary to make it difficult to read). Nevertheless, teams of crackers often work together to create a cracked version they can upload."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
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]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
75yo0n | If every matter is of a chemical composition, can't we in specific ways chemical produce almost any matter? | I do make myself stupid asking this., And also living things and organisms aside. | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9wsz8"
],
"text": [
"Sure. But it isn't always easy to get the atoms of one material to mix the way we want with the atoms of another material to produce the matter we actually want, and many compounds - especially organic compounds - are *incredibly* complex."
],
"score": [
8
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} | [
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75yr3i | In trading, what is a buy/sell wall? What is the strategy behind them? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9zays"
],
"text": [
"The walls exist due to the way transactions are done in an order book. Essentially, if you have X currency but want to sell it at $C price, you post a public sell order and once a buy order at X price is made, it will automatically make the transaction. The same works for buying, if you want to buy X amount at $C price, you make a buy order for it. As soon as a sell order is listed at < = $C, you will be matched and a transaction will occur. If someone makes a massive order, it appears like a wall in the order book charts, hence the term 'wall' is used for such orders. A buy wall is usually an effort to prevent the value of a cryptocurrency from falling below a certain amount. A person or group of persons can place a massive buy order at a certain price. No one would ever sell their currency below that price until that massive order is completed. This essentially prevents the value of the currency from going down since the order is so massive. This will protect the value of the currency for the people that own it. A sell wall is a method used to make money for those with massive amounts of currency. By placing a massive sell order at a certain price, it prevents people from trying to sell above the wall since they would have to wait until that massive sell order is fulfilled. Other sellers are then encouraged to make sell bids below this wall, which allows the people who made the wall to buy up all those bids. They then can tear down the wall and allow prices to increase, but only after they were able to buy a bunch of currency at a cheaper price. At any time, the owners of this wall can tear it down if it appears the market will eventually pass the price of the wall. Once the sell wall appears to go down, people are encouraged to buy, buy, buy. The owners of the now torn down wall can then post all of their currency at higher prices to make a profit."
],
"score": [
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|
75z0r3 | not sure how dumb this sounds but since we are running out of oil it seemed worth it - plants use CO2 and water (+sunlight) to make energy in their chloroplast... what's there stopping us from making large chloroplast generators that would generate energy for us ? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9zvxc",
"do9ztsk"
],
"text": [
"Sure, you could use it to make bio-diesel and then use diesel generators to make electricity. It's more than possible, it could be engineered. However, there are less expensive ways to make electricity, like solar panels or wind generators. We have no shortage of energy, economic factors balance which sources are the most affordable.",
"well... thats biofuel in a nutshell. and we are, we are putting ethanol in our gas (you may know of E85 fuel?). but its more expensive than oil... and it degrades our farmland. there are other processes being worked on, algea looks promising as a medium for it, but theres still work to be done."
],
"score": [
7,
3
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} | [
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|
75zbrp | When you hydraulic press an object, does all the force come from the press, or does any of it come from the stationary part? | We've been having a discussion about our dough pressing machine at my bakery. It's essentially a machine that presses whatever dough you put into it, into a square. So, kind of like a hydraulic press, one part is pushing, and one is stationary. My cuestion is: Is the press putting in all the force, or is the lid putting out an equal force on the dough as it presses out? The argument stems from if the press itself is putting all the (flattening) force, or if the lid is putting any force in as well. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"doa31zv"
],
"text": [
"There is equal force being applied by both the press and the stationary object. Let's look at another example of opposing forces to see how they work, then we'll go back to the press example. Take your hands and put them together like you're praying/clapping ([it should look a little like this]( URL_0 )). Don't press at all with your left and and start to press with your right hand. Both of your hands will start moving to the left. Now start pushing back with your left hand. Eventually, you can press hard enough so your hands balance eachother out. The only way to stop the movement is by putting equal pressure from both hands. In that example, we learned that an unopposed force will cause movement (after all, force is the measure of mass times acceleration). And the only way to neutralize that acceleration was to put equal force against it. Going back to the hydraulic press example, the same factors are at play. If there was no force pushing back up against the press, the whole mechanism would just sink into the ground. Instead, you have an equal force (essentially the strength of the base \"pushing up\") opposing it."
],
"score": [
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"text_urls": [
[
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} | [
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75zj8a | When do I stop being related to my descendants? | That is to say, after how many generations will my generations cease to be more related to me than to a stranger? If my children inherit 50% of my unique genetic markers, grandchildren 25%, great-grandchildren 12.5%, then at some point this percentage will become negligible, right? The question also applies in reverse, if I were to travel in time to meet a distant ancestor, when would a DNA test fail to confirm that I'm more related to him/her than a random stranger? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"doa7ce5",
"doadzut",
"doa3z04"
],
"text": [
"You've got roughly 2^32 base pairs in your genes. Mathematically speaking, your genes are probably \"flushed out\" entirely from your descendants after 32 generations (because each generation's share goes down by a factor of 2). Now, practically speaking, our genomes are 99.9% the same as everyone else's. So it's about 10 generations or so less that you're practically flushed out. And realistically, after just 5 generations, most of your descendants are third cousins, with less than 1% shared DNA. After just a few more, there's effectively no chance your most distant descendants (those who only share you in common and not a more recent relative) share any DNA. If their only link is you and they almost certainly don't share any DNA anymore(1), they're effectively not relatives, and their blood link with you doesn't show anymore. At that point, I think it's safe to say they're not really your descendants anymore in the way you're thinking about it. 1) I don't mean to suggest that they don't share copies of the same base pairs anymore, they still share 99.9%. I mean that their particular copies of those base pairs were unlikely to have descended to them via the same direct ancestors.",
"Never. The line approaches zero, but it never quite gets there. But it depends on when you draw the line at \"negligible.\" It gets to be negligible fairly quickly.",
"You're related forever, just less and less. If you took a DNA test today, there are usually clear signs of where your ancestors are from 1000 years ago."
],
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75zn7e | Why does the turning radius of a car increase the faster the car goes? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"doa5d2g",
"doa5atj"
],
"text": [
"At full traction, the turning radius doesn't change. But as speed increases you potentially can go beyond traction limits of the tire. So it'll slip. Most consumer cars are adjusted to have the front tires slip before the rear tires. This is called understeer.",
"As the car moves faster, it has more inertia. So when it starts to turn, there’s more force trying to keep it moving in the same direction (straight). If you’re driving fast and you turn the wheel too sharply, the back of the car can skid out, or the car can even flip because it still wants to go straight. The faster you go, the wider you have to make your turning radius to prevent this from happening."
],
"score": [
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3
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} | [
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|
75zyqy | Why do we get “butterflies” in our stomachs when thinking about a crush? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"doaa47o"
],
"text": [
"There is within us a nervous system. These nerves send signals from our body to our brain and from our brain to our body (feedback loop that goes both ways). Feelings are a core component of our subconcious. Our subconscious makes up a large portion of who we are, up to 95% by some estimates. Love and attraction are strong emotions and emotions are tied deeply with our body. When we see someone whom we are fond of then the caterpillars in our stomach pupate and emerge as thousands of tiny butterflies who try to escape to drain the life force from this being but alas they are stopped by the protective layer of acid that slowly erodes their spirit."
],
"score": [
7
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} | [
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|
7608c7 | Why is it that sometimes when we get cut or burned really bad it takes a second to register what happened? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"doa9v2g"
],
"text": [
"There are two kinds of neural axons in your body: myelinated and non-myelinated. To put it simply, it costs the body a lot of energy to build and maintain myelinated nerves, but they communicate signals at *incredible* speeds. They're almost instantaneous. You body needs these nerves for things like touch. It would suck if you had to fight input lag just to pour yourself a coffee in the morning. Non-myelinated nerves have a rather slow transmission speed, something like 5-10 ft/sec if I remember correctly. Pain nerves are non-myelinated, which gives you a little bit of time before the signal reaches the brain."
],
"score": [
8
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"text_urls": [
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} | [
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|
760h8m | How do domains work, like .com .ru? Why can sites like discord use a custom domain like .gg? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"doabppg"
],
"text": [
".gg isn't a \"custom\" domain. It's a top level domain registered to \"the crown dependency of Guernsey\" (I've never even heard of the place). The little small countries like Guernsey have TLDs allocated to them and then they can either hold on to them or turn around and sell domains registered under their top-level domain and make some money off the dea."
],
"score": [
8
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} | [
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|
760hsl | How come musicians in rock bands don't typically use sheet music like they do in an orchestra? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"doacqjv"
],
"text": [
"Several reasons. - Rock songs are typically a lot simpler (and shorter) than classical music. That means that for a given amount of practice, they have played the music more. - Rock artists typically move around more than classical musicians, making it more essential that they be able to play without sheet music. - It is also important to note that sheet music is quite often a backup to a classical musician. Most musicians, once ready for a concert, are quite capable of playing without sheet music. The sheet music simply acts as a reminder in case of memory lapse."
],
"score": [
3
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} | [
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|
760ow9 | If you somehow broke a bone in space, would your bones be floating in your body? What would happen to the blood? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"doadjny",
"doafv90",
"doaduz6"
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"text": [
"Your bones would stay put, and you'd be relatively fine as long as it wasn't a compound fracture where skin is broken. Also, u/mmm3says is correct about edema and exercise. I've never had a broken bone, so I tend to forget about such complications, but as an anatomy student I can't really afford that.",
"When you break a bone you don't gain space in your body for the bone to \"float\". It would behave almost exactly as in earth, with the added advantage being that since things \"weigh\" less you would probably have a easier time moving with a broken leg or lifting something with a broken arm.",
"Edema would be worse (Can't elevate it to relive it either). Immobilizing it easier. But bones in space get weaker without loads being put on them. So I doubt bone repair would go well, because you can't exercise a broken arm."
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760r0f | How do companies determine the cost of acquiring a customer? | The cost of acquiring a customer is brought up a bit in Shark Tank and I have no idea how that can be calculated. It feels like there are so many variables and such. Could I get an easy-to-follow explanation? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"1) Time and material spent on sales & advertising. If you spend $1 million on an advertising campaign and it averages 10 new customers, then that's at least $100K to acquire the customer. 2) Time & Material getting the new customer set up. This covers any kind of material that you have to give the customer (such as a device to use your service), the time it takes to create the customer's back-office information (automation is a good thing here), and any time/material it takes training the customer on the use of your service before they can start giving you money on a regular basis."
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760v10 | Why does looking through the side window in cars make it seem like you’re going much faster than looking out the front? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Relative motion. When you are looking out front your reference is further away making it seem like it’s not changing much. Likewise, when looking out the side the reference is typically closer making it seem faster. Look out the side and compare your relative motion compared to something far away (e.g. mountains), it will seem relatively slower",
"Say you’re driving 40mph,Everything to the sides is normally directly in front of you and you don’t have much peripheral, so everything will be whizzing by at 40mph, however from the front you have a much broader scope and can see much further around you so it’s not as direct and it seems relatively slower? That’s what I’ve always assumed anyway, hopefully I’ve worded that understandably, and I’m more than willing to have it explained otherwise by someone that knows better. I reckon maybe Doppler effect features somehow."
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760xo1 | Why is mixing alcohol bad? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We hear this idea all the time, and I know plenty of people who attest to it on their own experience. But I've also seen several articles in magazines and news that state that mixing different types of drinks (beer/wine/liquor/liqueur) doesn't actually do anything different in terms of making you more drunk or having a worse hangover. Ultimately what matters most is the amount of alcohol you consume. The common argument as to why people *think* mixing beer, wine, and liquor is bad is that people start getting drunk on beer or wine, and then carry over the quantity consumed per drink to liquor (because they're already buzzed) and end up drinking far more alcohol than they think they did. For me, I just make sure portions are appropriate (one 12oz beer = one 5oz wine = one 1.5oz shot of whiskey/vodka/rum) and I'm usually ok up to four drinks in an evening, or more if I start really early.",
"Mixing alcohol is not bad in itself. The idea comes when you start mixing things that are really tasty without knowing how much you're drinking. You've heard – beer before liquor; never been sicker. Liquor before beer; you're in the clear? This is because once you get a buzz or drunk and then you switch to something more intoxicating you don't realize how much your consuming. If you start with beer and then switch to liquor like your drinking beer, then you're gonna have a bad time. But if you start with something more and go to less then you have a better idea of your pace. Here's a good rule: for every drink follow it up with a glass of water."
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761ck4 | How did people figure out Absolute Zero when it's practically unreachable? | How do we know it's exactly -273.15°C, -458,67°F or 0 K when it is only a theoretical temperature? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The initial thoughts of absolute zero were decided by watching other materials behave as they got colder. Scientists figured that there had to be an absolute bottom end of the scale and they calculated this by some basic extrapolation and came up with a pretty reasonable guess that was only off by about 30C. Further experimentations with gasses and other extrapolation got the figure closer to the -273C we go by now. While 0K is theoretical, we've gotten pretty close. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.0000006K.",
"These days they can reach so close to absolute zero that two decimal places of degrees is hopelessly inaccurate. I think they're down to less than a nano Kelvin in the labs now, i.e., -273.149999999°C. Kelvin and Celsius are defined so that absolute zero is exactly at 0K and -273.15°C, so the smart but uninteresting answer is: because the metric system defines them to be so. Lord Kelvin used the relationship between gas pressure and temperature. The theory is that pressure is proportional to temperature so you can graph the pressure over as wide a range of temperatures as you can manage and then extrapolate the straight line you should see down to zero pressure. That tells you what zero temperature should be."
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761i4b | If I'm driving at a constant speed of 60mph and get rear-ended by a vehicle which is moving at a constant 80mph, would the force of impact be the same as if I were sitting at 0mph and got rear ended by someone driving 20mph? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"yes, the impact would have the same amount of force. The big difference would be the whole spinning out of control at 60 mph would be much more dangerous than at 0 mph.",
"Yes, you would experience the same force, but this doesn't mean the same thing would happen in the two cases. The first thing we're concerned with is the momentum of the cars: momentum is a measure of the mass and velocity of an object. A higher momentum basically means that an object will resist slowing down. Next, the velocity of the impact. In both cases, the velocity of the faster car is basically 20mph. Basically, as long as you're moving at a constant speed, you can say that you aren't moving at all, and everything around you is instead moving based on your actual speed; this is the underlying premise of relativity. So in both cases, the rear car will have the same relative momentum at the moment of impact, leading to the same force being applied. This is where the differences start. If you're travelling at 60mph, the bits of your car that need to move are already moving, so you absorb more of the momentum and could potentially lose control of your vehicle. If you're stopped, then what will happen depends on conditions inside your vehicle: is your car in gear with the engine off, in neutral with the brakes on, or in neutral with the brakes off? If your car is in gear, then in order for it to move, the force needs to be strong enough to cause your wheels to move the engine block - the opposite of what normally happens. This isn't a great scenario, as the force your car receives won't be transferred to forward motion as easily, and could feel quite nasty. If your car is in neutral with the brakes off, you will find yourself rolling forwards, which is probably the best situation unless this pushes you into another vehicle. Have you ever seen a Newton's Cradle? This situation is kind of like one of those - your car will absorb some of the motion and start rolling. You'll still get a nasty jolt, but it won't be as bad as the other two cases; this is the closest to the situation where you're travelling at 60mph. Finally, if you're in neutral with the brakes on, you'll have quite a nasty experience. Your car will do everything it can to resist moving, so more of the momentum will be absorbed. This is because in order for your wheels to turn, they need to overcome the friction from the brakes and also move your engine block; alternatively, your car will slide forwards because the wheels won't turn. I hope this answer was helpful for you."
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761jja | what determines whether a #2 will be a sinker or a floater? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"According google. “Poop Should Sink. Listen for the sound of your stool as it hits the water in the toilet. Floating stools are often an indication of high fat content, which can be a sign of malabsorption, a condition in which you can't absorb enough fat and other nutrients from the food you're ingesting.”"
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761jxo | Is it more efficient to put your food in the middle, or the outer portion of the rotating tray in your microwave | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The wavelength of the radio frequency energy in the microwave is 12.24 cm. The energy is bouncing back and forth inside the oven but inside the oven, the waves appear (if you could see them) to stand still, and are called standing waves. Each standing wave has anti-nodes spaced 1/2 wavelengths (6.12cm) apart, and at those points the food is cooked. This means there are also nodes spaced 1/2 wavelengths apart where the food does not cook. As the food spins it passes through the cook-zones and no-cook-zones over and over. To heat faster, you want it to spend more time in the cook-zones but without measuring exactly where the cold spots are, it's impossible to say what placement would be more efficient. At a guess I'd go with the outside.",
"The outside would be my logical choice, simply because that's the position that gets the food physically moving around the interior of the oven more. If you sit it right in the middle, the centre of the food will literally not move position it'll just rotate on the spot. If that happens to coincide with a cold spot in the microwave (and they do occur otherwise you'd not need the turntable at all) then that bit won't properly get cooked. On the edge the food is moving round and round the outer edge of the wheel, which should I'd have said, result in more even heating."
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761lls | How do potholes form and how do they hurt my tires? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Depends on where you are. They're pretty much all moisture related, but some are from freezing and others just from liquid water. Essentially water gets under the road surface and causes the ground to expand (freezing) or to wash away or get really soft and squishy (liquid water). In either case this weakens the road surface and allows the surface of the road to break when the weight of a car runs over it. Then the edges crumble making the hole bigger, and when it rains the hole traps water and softens more of the surrounding ground, making it weaker as well, which also leads to expansion. Driving through the hole erodes it and deepens it too. This is bad for your wheels because they're meant to drive over a smooth surface and you're generally going moderately fast on a well maintained road. When you drop into a pothole it's like hitting a curb at high speed. The rubber and air of your tire can't protect against the heavy impact over a small portion of the tire and the edge of the pothole can wind up hitting the rim of your wheel, bending it and popping the bead of your tire off the rim in some cases. Potholes are also bad for your suspension. Most cars have suspension meant for smooth roads and the suspension of a vehicle is carefully adjusted with a lot of points of potential weakness. A sudden impact can damage those points where the suspension is adjusted and damage your car that way too."
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761pzc | Why do our eyes make tears when we are tired? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"When we yawn, the facial muscles surrounding our eyes pull tight. This may put pressure on our lacrimal glands(the glands that are neatly tucked away deep beneath our upper eyelids just below our eyebrow bones.) These glands produce the watery component to our eyes’ own natural tears. They are working to produce and release tears slowly throughout the day to coat the surface of our eyes at all times, not just when we cry (think about it, that is why our eyes always look so glossy.) When the facial muscles tighten during a yawn, the lacrimal glands may not get \"squeezed\", causing them to release a small amount of tears that they were storing to release later.\""
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761qp2 | Why does mold on food grow in spots rather than relatively even across the surface? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Each spot is its own colony of mould arising from a single organism which are distributed randomly across the surface of the food. It ends up being a carpet of mould with lots of colonies all growing together over time. To get an even coverage, the organism would have to be evenly spread across the surface right from the start."
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761r9c | Given the fact that the human heart has the sole job of moving blood through every inch of every extremity in the body, how is it able to accomplish this in morbidly obese individuals or is there something else happening there that picks up the slack for the heart? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No, there's nothing else picking up the slack. Such an obese person's heart is going to work harder, they will have higher blood pressure, and in the long term this would add to poor cardiovascular health and increased morbidity (ie they'll die younger than a healthy person)"
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761w94 | If the heart is a muscle, why is it weakened by being overworked? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Every muscle is weakened if it's *over*worked. Muscles need to rest and recover. Simply put, they get stronger by being slightly damaged through use and being rebuilt stronger. A heart gets stronger if you train it and then let it rest; for example, if you ran a couple miles a day. But if it's pumping at 120 bpm all day it will get weakened, the same way your bicep will get weakened if you do curls for 12 hours straight",
"Not a dr but because I was born with 5 congenital heart defects, I know a good amount. For a person like myself , even those with aquired heart illness (very different from CHD)... when stress is put on the heart, it compensates for the stress and beats faster in order to push blood through to your other organs. There's also irregular heartbeats /a-fib/pvc's. When the heart beats abnormally, it weakens it. And when this happens at a rate of 10% or over in a period of a time.. then it's something that needs to be looked into a treated. There's also something called regurgitation. It can happen at almost any area of the heart. I have 4 different types of it. It basically means your blood is backing up and is going the opposite direction. Which makes it work so much harder than it should. And when things happen. And continues to happen or get worse... over time it's making the walls of your heart get thinner. High blood pressure is common. It makes the blood flow being forced through the vessels. Which puts more strain on the heart. Theirs so many factors as to what could make the heart weaken. It could one thing or like me it's a lot more."
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761xkc | What are chemtrails? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Chem trails are something made up by conspiracy theorists. They believe that the contrails left by airplanes in the sky actually have chemicals in them (hence the name) that are used by the government to control the minds of the population.",
"\"Chemtrails\" refer to the exhaust contrails that jet aircraft leave in the sky as they pass. They are composed of mostly water, CO2, and other mundane combustion products. Those who use the term seriously are conspiracy theory nutjobs who think they're actually composed of drugs that make the population docile to the control of [insert world-dominating boogeyman here]."
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761xqi | Why does it take babies such a long time to learn basic motor skills compared to animals that are able to do it close within a month or even as soon as they're born? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The human brain is amazingly complicated, more so than that of pretty much any other land critter. In order for that to work, we need big heads. The problem with this is that the human pelvis is too narrow to squeeze out a baby if the baby's head were much bigger than it is, so the brain is less developed at birth for humans than for other primates. Less development in the brain means human babies need longer to learn everything they need to grow up and be successful humans. Language is literally a huge part of our brains, and it takes a long time to sort out, never mind walking on two legs besides that.",
"There are a lot of comments explaining the basic motor aspect of development and framing it as a pelvis size to baby head issue. This is one older theory that does not stand up as well as another newer one (I’ve posted about it elsewhere on the thread but I’ll post it again). Human babies are born developmentally premature for one main physiologic reason. There may be other non-physiological benefits (ie the socialization and language development during infancy that other primates do not devote energy towards). It has less to do with pelvis size and more to do with the baby needing more energy (to grow its brain). While it’s true that babies heads would struggle to fit through the birth canal, there are other primates who have the same issue despite having relatively much smaller brains. This evidence may suggest that another factor besides size is at play. If you look at energy expenditures of the fetus, it happens to be that birth occurs at the moment they require more energy than they are getting via the placenta. They are essentially hungry for breast milk. This mechanism may be how birth is regulated in all mammals, but I only learned it in the context of human evolution. Now, there are two types of genes which are battling against each other: one to ensure the baby is small enough to be safely birthed, and one to ensure the baby is big and strong. Either the mother or father pass on one of these types, and there are common genetic diseases related to the malfunction of their expression. These would be Prader Willi (father gene turned off) or Angelman (mother gene turned off) syndromes. Edit: I’ve got a few minutes of free time, so I just wanted to expand on the last part: Prader Willi is characterized by children who have insatiable hunger. They lack their father’s gene (either being turned off or by having two copies of mom’s). This makes sense in the context of “genetic birth wars”; the mother gene wants the baby to be birthed sooner, so the fetus needs to feel hungry sooner. Angelman is not characterized by any hunger/satiety issues, but I’m not sure what this says about the genetic battle between Mom and Dad.",
"The other explanations cover the biggest and most important answer but I'll add one more critical factor: humans are a social animal that have the ability through herd protection, tool use, and intelligence to actually ALLOW us to look after a baby for its first few years. So a part of the answer is \"because we can survive it.\" There's different strategies for giving birth to helpless babies with survival rates that are enough to keep the species going. Many mammals, particularly rodents find a hiding spot for their large litters of small babies. Marsupials have an equivalent to a \"second womb\" that allows the baby to stay safe and nurtured even after birth. Many birds split nest-sitting duties with gathering food until the fledglings are old enough. But with humans, we establish a social support network that allows a parent or surrogate parent to look after newly born helpless kids instead of devoting 100% of their time doing other stuff that's necessary for survival. And this approach to role specialization was good enough for our ancestors to have enough surviving kids so we could thrive.",
"Because we walk upright we have a different hip-structure than most other creatures. Our hips are much narrower. And because we have larger brains We require larger skulls which in turn would require wider hips to come out fully formed. Instead, we come out partially mature with soft skulls and lacking motor controls. These instead develop over time. It is a compromise of upright stature and intelligence.",
"Human babies develop 'half baked' and with a much less widely established brain. Think of it as the difference between a tiny computer like an Arduino or raspberry pi compared to a graphing calculator. Because there aren't a whole lot of built in functions on the Arduino, it can be much more versatile. The calculator on the other hand has very specific but rigid capabilities. The key difference, though, is that the Arduino needs to be programmed. The graphing calculator may be programmed in simple ways, but doesn't hold a candle to the Arduino. But programming the Arduino takes time, and effort. By developing without automatic (instinctive) capabilities, humans have to learn to control their own bodies explicitly, and have to learn on their own how to walk, and talk, and move their hands... But because the controls aren't 'set in stone', it opens the controller up to a much more diverse set of capabilities.",
"Humans suck at giving birth. We have really large heads to house our brains, and really small hips. Because of this, humans babies have to come out relatively early in development. If we waited until they where developed enough to have strong motor skills they wouldn't fit through the birth canal and would likely kill the mother during birth.",
"Compared to other placental mammals, our babies are born very premature. While one theory is head size vs pelvis, another theory about the timing of birth is that the mother's body just can't metabolically continue to sustain *two* oversized brains (twins are often born earlier). So, while newborns do have the reflexes necessary to walk, resources were so intensely focused on brain growth that they don't have the muscle to act upon those reflexes.",
"The simple answer is that humans are born with underdeveloped brains relative to other animals. What you might also be wondering is, why are humans born with underdeveloped brains? The answer to this is a little more complicated and, to be clear, there is not one single fully-accepted explanation. Two major competing theories are (1) the obstetric dilemma and (2) the energetics, gestation, growth hypothesis. Here's a snippet from a slide that I present to my class (Intro Psyc) on these two theories: (1) Obstetric dilemma: Human birth canal very narrow because of bipedalism (i.e., as proto-humans transitioned to walking on two legs, this severely narrowed the birth canal); birth canal is too narrow to accommodate brain (and head) development of infant past approximately 40 weeks gestation (i.e., 9-months into pregnancy). In short, brain underdevelopment mostly about female anatomy (size of birth canal). (2) Energetics, gestation, growth hypothesis: Fetal development requires increasingly large amounts of energy (from mom) to support; mom’s safe limit (i.e., the amount of energy she can provide baby without putting her [and baby's] health in serious jeopardy) reached at approximately 40 weeks; going into labor at 40 weeks basically saves the life of mom and baby, but at the cost of an underdeveloped brain. Post-birth development supported by energy-rich and efficiently produced breastmilk. In short, brain underdevelopment mostly about fetal energy requirements. Both theories have evidence for and against them. My hunch is that they're probably both playing a role in babies' underdeveloped brains.",
"Because our babies don't die if they can't walk within a week. We carry them around and look after them. If a wild animal baby can't walk within a week, it gets eaten and therefore doesn't reproduce. So the only lineage that survives is the one with babies that are born running basically.",
"No one else seems to have brought this up yet, so I thought I'd point out that there's a massive difference in what's considered 'basic' between humans and other animals. Walking on two legs is *hard* compared to walking on four. The kind of fine motor control you see babies learn in the two years of their life - grasping, rotating etc - is about as good as some species of primates get. Even aside from humans being born essentially premature, there's just so much more to learn about fundamental movement, and those fundamentals let us move on to incredible things.",
"Babies cannot walk because their nervous system is not mature enough. Axons(imagine them like long tails of neurons) connect the brain with the spine and then with the muscles. In order for axons to work and carry the information of movement they need to be covered with myelin, which works as a protection and makes the info travel faster. The myelination process takes time.",
"I learned that in Animal Science from my agronomy studies. The animals you are talking about are mostly preys. They have to kow how to walk/run pretty early in case they need to flee if there is a predator. Predators (like wolves, humans, ...) usually don't need to learn this as soon. There is also what we call parental care. Litters exist because survival of the fittest and those babies don't receive that much parental care so they have to know how to be autonome very fast. However, for other species they will have one baby per pregnancy because the parental care is superior. Parents will be around much longer to protect and teach their younglings. So, this offspring might develop slowly. Humans are a mix of both from what I can remember.",
"compared to many mammals, we are underdeveloped at birth. one of the major things that happens through the first year of life is that the branches of our nervous system become myelinated and thus under our control. myelination occurs in different directions -- cephalo-caudal and proximal-distal (i.e. from head to toe and from the centre outward). as myelination progresses, we develop control over our limbs, and then we start to refine our co-ordination.",
"Babies are dumb. Esp human babies. They cant catch, they cant throw, they cant file taxes, not even a 1040 EZ. I mean, its like 5 lines to fill out, one of which is your name! UGH No but seriously, There are 2 things , and both are realated to the brain. 1. humans have the one of the biggest brains per size of all mammals. Thats hard to get out of the pelvis. to do this, the most of the other bones in the baby are done forming when they are born EXCEPT the skull. The skull stays flexible because the babies brain will grow immensely during the first few years of living outside the womb. After its done most of its growing, the skull gets hard. If you have ever heard of protecting a babies \"soft spot on their head\" that is exactly what is happeing. 2. Since the humans need such a big brain, but it cant get through the birth canal with one, it has to grow OUTSIDE the womb. It spends most of its energy growing that brain and developing during the first few years to have a bigger brain later. This puts a cost however, as some innate qualities like you said (running, jumping, eyes, etc) are not quite able to be in there before the baby is born.",
"So an equivalent would be birds? They are hatched defenceless and have to be looked after. (I can't think of any mammalian equivalent).",
"Human beings have lots of afferent and few internuncial neural structures: we have the [highest association cortex (thinking) ratio to sensory cortext (motor)]( URL_0 ). So we have a brain-power trade-off. Human babies are born with the biology to begin thinking intelligently and learn, acquire language, and thus have the kind of unique sociality that human's display. That comes at the expense of motor function biology.",
"Found this: > **Why are babies so immature?** > Adult-like locomotor patterns come much earlier for many species. For example, a newborn horse walks within hours of birth. There are two factors to consider. One is that humans are an “altritial” species, meaning that we are relatively poorly developed at the time of birth. As described in detail above, a newborn’s spinal cord and brain are not ready for walking. Second, the human two-legged pattern of locomotion is particularly complex — balancing would be much easier if we had four feet on the ground. Walking feels simple, natural, and thought-free. It’s not. Programming this remarkable capacity into our nervous system takes a particular level of development followed by years of trial-and-error learning. [source]( URL_0 )",
"When we evolved to walk upright, our pelvic bones tilted, further narrowing the birth canal and those that survived had babies earlier. 9 months is premature but we compensate for having helpless infants by putting them in our clothing/houses.",
"In order for humans to walk upright we have developed much narrower hips than our prehuman ancestors. As a result, death in childbirth has been a huge factor in premature death in humans ever since. As a result, natural selection has led to humans being born much earlier in to pregnancy than they otherwise would be since smaller babies at birth are more likely to survive, as is the mother. Hence human babies are extremely underdeveloped at birth compared to other animals. It's a really interesting result of natural selection that such a seemingly major disadvantage was selected for due to something as seemingly minor as hip width.",
"A lot of the other answers here are missing some of the most important stuff, so here goes. Based on some anthropology and biology courses I took in University, it boils down to this: The more important learning is to an organism, the longer their childhood tends to be, the fewer instincts they have, and the more dependency they have when young. Humans are born with very few instincts beyond the most primitive ones needed for survival (e.g. suckling for milk). Other animals rely on learning and culture and social structures, but none come close to the extent that humans rely on these. A baby deer is able to walk right after being born because it is really, really important that it be mobile from the start. Deer depend on hiding and running away, and aren't particularly smart or fierce. Humans, however, rely on their brains to get by, and the development of that brain is more important than anything else, but it takes *time* since the knowledge needs to be learned. Also, a lot of the motor skills we develop are also quite complex compared to what other animals rely on as well (most animals use limbs quite well, but humans do a lot of stuff with fingers, and consider the number of joints in your hand compared to the rest of the arm to consider the implications of how much muscle coordination is required - something that also requires time to learn). In utero humans aren't really developing their motor skills, but they are capable of listening to conversations (not following them, but the beginning of learning language starts with listening and identifying speakers and tone and that sort of thing), and all of this is in the name to fast-track the capacity to learn from other humans. The motor skills newborns do develop involve learning - putting stuff in the hand, putting that stuff in the mouth (i.e. study it), and most early mobility is also in the service of curiosity (crawl over to object, put object in hand, put object in mouth). Learning is the most important skill for human survival, the purpose of childhood is for learning, the reason childhood goes on for as long as it does is because there is a lot of important learning to be done, and we are engineered to maximize learning more than anything else, even things that are basic survival needs for other organisms."
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7620xq | Why do we try to cure depression instead of prevent it? | We tend to try so hard to find out how to "cure" depression instead of focusing on what causes it and how to prevent it. Why? What's with all this chemical imbalance crap? Of course there's going to be something different with the chemicals in your brain. And I know it's not because "We don't know the cause of depression", because that's miles away from the truth. How about try listening to depressed people and why they say they are depressed?? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because depression is a physical malady, not a purely mental one. You sort of mentioned this, but apparently you are also disagreeing with it for some reason?",
"The science of brain chemistry and chemical imbalances aside, there's really *no way* to prevent the underlying environmental causes. Pain, loss, heartbreak, loneliness, feeling unsatisfied, tragedy, etc. are just a part of life. Some obviously have it worse than others, but that is also life. Life's not fair, and there's no way to fix that.",
"The \"chemical imbalance\" can have natural causes, like a stressful atmosphere, or you can just be dealt a shitty hand from life and genetically have things out of wack. These aren't really things that can be prevented. We know the cause of depression, it's usually the brain. The problem is we know jack shit about the brain to go further. It's incredibly complex.",
"Genetic predisposition + life events + physical health (nutrition, hormones, fatigue, unrelated illness) + coping skills + social support + personality. Any combination of the above. But ultimately it IS a chemical imbalance. Caused by lots of different variables which differ between people and even in a single person at different times of their life. Asking _why_ they are depressed shifts the responsibility onto the sufferer. Which isn’t helpful. And you can remove the ‘why’ and still be depressed."
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7621d4 | Why does steam help clear your sinuses and help coughing when you're sick? | Currently sick and all that makes it better is baths and showers. Why is it so effective and how long does the effect last? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The warm, humid vapours help to alleviate inflammation and dryness of the mucous membranes - in the sinuses and the throat."
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762303 | If computer code is written in a software interface, what did the person who wrote the code for the interface use? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The very first programs were written by physically setting switches by hand Then came punch cards and tape which could set switches automatically Once you move to \"writing\" you're talking about writing in assembly. There are basic instructions and how to execute them baked into the chip. It reads in the he code for ADD and the appropriate switches get activated Once you've got assembly going you can write something to let you write in assembly. With that you can write a C compiler, and it's turtles all the way up to stuff like Java and JavaScript"
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7628nx | How did so much water form on Earth? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not only is there so much water on Earth. There is more water in the Earth. The amount of water inside the Earth is substantial. How did it get here? When the solar system started accreting, that is when the matter in the original solar nebula ceased to move toward the center because the sun had become dense enough to begin nuclear reactions which generated enough energy to drive hydrogen away from the sun rather than accumulating more hydrogen, the solar nebula still had a mixture of compounds. Then new sun began glowing driving the light stuff away. Hydrogen was driven away from the sun by light pressure overcoming gravitational forces. Denser matter did not get driven so much. The outer planets formed. Just because the sun was now driving away hydrogen did not mean there was no hydrogen left close. If there had been enough left we could have been a multiple sun system. But not even Jupiter accumulated enough to begin major nuclear reactions. We have one sun, one star, in the center. Closer to the sun the inner planets formed with much less hydrogen. There was some. Some starting combining with the available oxygen to form water. Dense matter accreted, heavy matter too dense to be blown away from the sun, started forming clots of matter. As the matter accreted it began attracting more matter to it by gravitation. As the planets formed they were hot enough to be molten. Water would be a vapor and perhaps acquire enough energy to escape a growing planet. But nothing escaped the solar system. Planets grew. Iron became the core of the inner planets. Less dense matter coated this inner core. Water is not very dense. It remained mostly at the outer core of forming planets. At the edge of the solar system comets may have formed consisting of ice. The planets were sorting themselves out forming spheres of influence, sweeping their own orbits of debris, pulling comets out of the outer part of the solar system. The orbits of the comets would change. They would plunge toward the sun. If they got close to a planet their orbit would shift. Eventually they would collide with a planet. The Earth may have accumulated some of its water from comets. As the planets cooled water would not be driven from them as vapor. It would remain in the atmosphere. Eventually it fell as rain and made oceans on Earth, perhaps on Mars too, at first.",
"Interestingly, there is actually *not* a lot of water on Earth. The oceans only account for 0.1% of the volume of the Earth. In fact there is so little water, that if you scaled the Earth down to the size of a desktop globe, all the oceans would only come to a teaspoon full of water! Calculation: * Volume of the earth: 1,080 billion km3 * Volume of the oceans: 1.3 billion km3 * Ratio=0.123% * Volume of a desktop globe: ~5,500 millilitres * Volume of \"oceans\" on the globe: 6 millilitres (This doesn't account for water inside the earth)"
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7629pb | What does NASA use their 90Gb/s internet speed for, and why does it have to be so fast? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I am unsure as to the specifics, but no one can argue against NASA having an insane amount of data on hand. They also have a fair number of locations to which large amounts of data may need to be sent for various research purposes. They need it to be fast since very large quantities of data need to travel across the world and people are paid by the hour."
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762d05 | A.I. "was never shown what walking looked like" and yet "taught itself to walk" | [This animation of an AI "learning" to walk.]( URL_0 ) * What does it mean that the AI was "never shown what walking looks like". Wouldn't the programmers have to provide a finite number of possible configurations of parts, or simple limitations, which would effectively feed the AI the answer to "this is walking"? * What does it mean to "incentivise" AI? Is that an attempt to anthropomorphize the act of giving instruction? Is it actually an incentive for the AI, like a cookie is an incentive for a toddler? Or is it just a command? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The programmers start by setting up an environment--some sort of basic physics engine, much like you might find in a modern game. Within this engine, they design the physical structure of the model that they want to walk--it gets arms and legs, with physical properties like strength and inertia. From there the AI's job is to take some information about the state of the model and use that to come up with how hard it should pull or push each joint. To say that the AI wasn't \"shown how to walk\" this means that the programmers didn't go in and say \"walking consists of moving legs back and forth, alternating, while swinging your arms back and forth.\" A traditional approach would start from some basic motion profile like this, then let the AI learn how to tweak that profile in response to what simulated robot senses. This AI was given no such starting point and it's likely that the first approaches looked more like seizures and first-time player of QWOP than anything remotely resembling walking. The incentives come into play as the AI learns. Many AI approaches consist of trying different things, measuring which ones performed best, then tweaking the best performing options. For this kind of approach you need some way to identify something as \"best.\" For these AIs this seems to have been a simple distance measurement. To see something similar done you should check out URL_0 . To draw parallels, this AI seeks to build a car with no idea what cars look like, with the incentive of traveling to the right on the screen. At first the guesses are horribly mangled garbage, but after a few generations they start to look remarkably car shaped and they start managing to cover an impressive distance.",
"> What does it mean that the AI was \"never shown what walking looks like\". There's a model with parts that are attached with some simulated physics. That constrains what the part can do. The AI program is in charge of providing the input--how will the parts move? At first, it's input is simply random. For example, the input to each leg may not be synchronized in any way. > What does it mean to \"incentivise\" AI? For each run, the program stores what it does and whether it fails or succeeds. (It probably stores how far it got to the end point, too, and how long it took.) The next time it runs, it repeats actions correlated with success and avoids actions correlated with failure. Over time, its actions become less random as, by chance, it finds successful things to do and keeps doing those. Note that movements not strongly tied to either success or failure stay mostly random, e.g. look at the flailing of the arms.",
"1. The AI was never given to goal of \"Learn to walk\". It was given an environment and a puppet to control with the goal of \"Get puppet over there\". The AI then eventually came up with walking as a propulsion method. 2. It was not given instructions on how to achieve the goal. It was shown what the current state is, what the possible interactions are (muscle contractions on the puppet) and what the goal is. The closer it gets to the goal, the better score it gets. So you could look at it this way - its instruction was to get the best score possible. And since getting closer to the goal increased the score, it was incentivised to get to the goal.",
"> Wouldn't the programmers have to provide a finite number of possible configurations of parts, or simple limitations, they don't need to possible provide configurations, just possible actions, the AI has to figure out how to combine the actions itself. Yes limitations on actions would be provided. > which would effectively feed the AI the answer to \"this is walking\"? No, there are many ways to try to get moving that are not walking, the AI was not rewarded based on how close to walking it moved, but how successfully it moved in general. If there is a more efficient way to move forward the AI could very well have found that instead of walking.",
"Remember this is a simulation. There is no true landscape. There is no creature running. The programmers wrote a program which created a landscape. They wrote a program to resemble a final creature. What liberties they took we do not know. Apparently the creature gets some sort of \"sight\" in that objects ahead can be detected so that eventually it could walk around objects. Now come the interesting part. The programmers designed some sort of mutation effect. The program generating the creature would change itself randomly. We do not know what parameters the designers allowed mutations on. But multiple variations of the original creature could be generated. The designers now had mutated creatures in a landscape. They ran innumerable iterations of mutated creatures. When random mutations in the program creating the creature produced one which could move that program as selected and preserved. Ir was reused as the creature basic program. More mutations were created. the ones which moved best were selected for. With millions, maybe billions or more, of iterations of this selection process the animation which walked the best was produced."
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762dmu | Why do men have more muscles than women? | Given same amount of workout, diet plan etc., why do men develop way more muscles than women? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Men have more muscle mass than women do on average, but both have about the same number of skeletal muscles. Men produce a hormone called testosterone in far greater amounts than women do. One of the things testosterone does is increase protein synthesis in muscles.",
"Men don't have more muscles than women. Both men and women have around 640 muscles depending on how you define a muscle.",
"Testosterone. Testosterone plays a major role in muscular strength and men have much more of this hormone than women. This is why testosterone itself is used as a steroid to make male and female athletes stronger than they would otherwise be.",
"You have to go back in time to when modern humans were developing for the answer: Evolutionary pressure has led to a biology where male humans have been generally more inclined to develop more muscle weight because they did more heavier work types of activities than women. Muscles take energy to run, so a heavily muscular person requires more calories to keep up... and that can make it harder for a big muscular human to survive in tough times. Not wantign to waste food energy on unused muscles is why we only develop bigger muscles when we do physical work such as weightlifting, or we'll generally lose that conditioning. And back then, because there wasn't infinite food, not everyone was automatically muscular and specialization helped distribute muscularity to those that needed it. And that ended up being the guys. *Very generally speaking*, ancient female humans focused on child-rearing, gathering and crafting activities while male humans focused on defense and hunting and other more physical elements, so muscle mass was affected accordingly. Add to this that until modern times scrawny men were generally less attractive and had less kids, and our biology aligned toward this differentiation because it was a successful evolutionary tactic. Men generally have an easier time bulking up as a result even today."
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762mbx | Why do humans have a habit of staring "into nothingness"? | This has been happening to me a lot. Right now I'm thinking it's kind of like a computer. If it thinks of too many things at once, it just freezes. However this probably isn't the case. ELI5! EDIT: The funny thing is that I had the idea for this post while staring into nothing. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yo ho ho! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Why do we \"space out\" randomly? ]( URL_6 ) 1. [ELI5: Why do we \"zone out\", or stare into space? ]( URL_1 ) 1. [ELI5: Why we sometimes stare into the distance and have a delayed reaction to people talking to us. ]( URL_2 ) 1. [ELI5: When we stare and \"zone out,\" why does what we're staring at become blurry and double? ]( URL_5 ) 1. [ELI5: Why do we \"space out?\" ]( URL_7 ) 1. [ELI5: What causes you to \"space out\"? ]( URL_4 ) 1. [ELI5: What happens to your brain when you space out? ]( URL_3 ) 1. [ELI5: What is actually happening when I'm \"staring in to space\"? ]( URL_0 )",
"You're just processing other information in your mind and not focused on visual inputs at that precise moment. I'm sure all animals with eyes do this exact thing.",
"I'm guessing you mean why do humans \"zone out\" and it's normally when your mental thoughts are more entertaining or important than whatever is going on in reality. It's very common when someone is tired or in a very boring place like school to start daydreaming or thinking about other stuff to make time go by.",
"Then your eyes lose focus and you're too lazy to refocus them so you just accept it and embrace the Void.",
"For me it’s what that one comedian calls the ‘nothing box’. 9/10 Times when I zone out I’m literally think about nothing.",
"Microsleep is something to look up. Microsleep occurs unwillingly and it occurs because of lack of rest. This results in the brain going blank (because it needs to rest) and you just stare into nothingness and then you wake up.",
"Have you ever seen a cat? Or a dog?",
"I won't speak for everyone, but for me, is some kind of subconscious defence. I noticed I'm falling into this state when somebody or something is attacking me psychologically (abuse, bullying, etc.) When it takes place, part of me seems disappearing and all destructive words don't touch in any way. They are just going through.",
"The short answer is that we have very limited cognitive resources and focusing on things uses some of that capacity. When concentrating hard on something, we tend to close our eyes or look up or look out the window, which reduces visual stimuli and thus frees up additional cognitive capacity.",
"\"spacing out?\" i dunno. my sister, my mom, and myself do this more than anyone i've known. while engaged even. could be actively conversing, then just spaaaace....ooouut without missing a beat. why we do it? i'd love to know. one thing i can tell you, goddamn does it feel good. it feels like it relaxes some part of the brain that doesnt rest much during waking hours. it's pretty nice. if you dont, or havent found that you have very often, i very much recommend it. its easy, just stare below the horizon -through the earth. your welco.",
"I always use this “feeling” to describe what being high on cannabis feels like to newbies."
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762uaz | Why is stomach fat considered to be the worst? | Is there any scientific weight to this? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are different types of fat in your body. The main two are visceral, close to your organs, and subcutaneous, below your skin. Your visceral fat secretes hormones that can affect your organs, liver, heart, kidneys, etc. There have been epidemiological studies linking high levels of visceral fat with heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. This visceral fat surrounds your abdomen so people call it stomach fat, even though your subcutaneous fat is there as well, sitting on top of it and under your skin."
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762uui | Why, when the majority of African Slaves went to South America and the Carribbean, in dramas is it almost always shown in relation to US slavery. | I have no agenda here. I was just listening to an audiobook and heard that only 6% of African slaves went to the US but if you were to judge from media you would not know it. Why is this? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm going to presume that you are either an American, or otherwise in the Anglosphere. Most of the media you likely consume was produced by Americans, or those influenced by Americans. As such, most media focusing on slavery is going to focus on the United States's relationship with the institution of slavery, which means focusing on slavery in the United States. I'm certain if you looked at media created by people in places like Brazil, the Caribbean, etc. they would focus more on their own relationship with slavery, and the history of slavery in their country.",
"American slavery continued much longer. Combine that with the history of extreme racism in the US, and you have the answer. SA and Europe didn't have the same extreme racism as the US afaik."
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