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question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
why do fruits taste so much better when in season	Because the phrase "in season" is used by humans to describe the time of year when we most prefer the taste of different fruits.	[ "The fruiting begins in November, maturing between February and April, where living in Minas Gerais, where it is popularly associated with the Lent season. When the fruit is ripe it falls to the ground under the protection of the crown, exuding a strong and distinctive smell. These are the best quality fruits for t...
How do computers get an exact value for integration and derivatives?	Differentiation is relatively straightforward and can be done by applying a few simple rules. Integration is the tricky thing. One way that computers integrate is by using the [Risch Algorithm](_URL_0_).	[ "Despite having infinitely many derivatives of delta functions, still obeys the optical equivalence theorem. If the expectation value of the number operator, for example, is taken with respect to the state vector or as a phase space average with respect to , the two expectation values match:\n", "The th derivativ...
Did Vikings or pirates ever develop moral codes limiting what they could do to their victims?	A very curious bit of Viking morals: it's wrong to steal, but it's right to take by force. One of the Icelandic sagas tells of a Viking raid in the Baltic, where the Viking party manages to steal stuff from a farm under the cover of darkness without the occupants realizing what's going on. Halfway back to the boats, th...	[ "In 2011, Stolt-Nielsen suggested that captured pirates should be executed and their boats sunk, the historical response to piracy, as an effective solution to the problem of piracy off the Horn of Africa. He was criticised by Norway's Foreign Ministry's state secretary, who said that \"human rights\" apply even to...
my father says he can taste the difference between whether i boil the water for his tea over the stove, or, in the microwave (our kettle is bust). is it possible that the water could taste different due to different boiling methods?	It could actually! When water is boiled on a stovetop, the impurities (metal ions) that generally settle at the bottom (fall out of colloid/solution) get pushed up with the bubbles of water vapor that form at the bottom of the kettle. That causes a remixing of the impurities and is what gives water a taste. Microw...	[ "A kettle, sometimes called a tea kettle or teakettle, is a type of pot, specialized for boiling water, with a lid, spout, and handle, or a small kitchen appliance of similar shape that functions in a self-contained manner. Kettles can be heated either by placing on a stove, or by their own internal electric heatin...
why when common people debate abortion it turns into "every sperm is sacred" vs "legalized infanticide" when there is an obvious gray area?	Because hard set, black and white arguments are easier. They're not more right. They're just easier. It's hard to paint someone as an inhuman monster when you're forced to admit they may be right on some points...or that the issue at hand may be more gray than a lot of folks would like you to know. Also, it's easie...	[ "Controversy over the beginning of pregnancy occurs in different contexts, particularly as it is discussed within the abortion debate in the United States. Because an abortion is defined as ending an established pregnancy, rather than as destroying a fertilized egg, depending on when pregnancy is considered to begi...
how did doctors ever think that cigarettes were good for you?	Back then the regulation on corruption and advertising were much looser. Big tobacco companies would pay their own doctors to conducts their own studies and publish false claims. Any studies that exposed the risks of smoking were silenced with money or buried under the flood of false reports. Edit: Also when cigarette...	[ "A true breakthrough came in 1948, when the British epidemiologist Richard Doll published the first major studies that demonstrated that smoking could cause serious health damage. While some physicians in the United States once pitched cigarettes as health-improving products, some commentators now argue that it is ...
Is there a limit to the number of songs that can be composed?	Composed? No. The space of time limited [continuous signals](_URL_2_) is of course uncountably infinite. Differentiated? Yes. To explain this, we have to make two assumptions, * each song can be reproduced with some maximum amount of power, * there will be noise added to the signal (which we will assume is [Gaus...	[ "Composers often impose a limit on how complex the ratios may become. For example, a composer who chooses to write in 7-limit just intonation will not employ ratios that use powers of prime numbers larger than 7. Under this scheme, ratios like 11:7 and 13:6 would not be permitted, because 11 and 13 cannot be expres...
Is there an estimate for what percentage of the population is completely free from mental illness ?	About 80% are free from mental illness each year, so says SAMHSA [[ABC article](_URL_0_), [bunch of raw data](_URL_1_)]. Brought to you by the good doctors that invent disorders for drugs rather than the other way around (think prescribing amphetamines to pre-pubescent kids) and have a long history of expanding their ...	[ "BULLET::::- Comorbidity: Of the people who had experienced a mental illness in their lifetime (48% of the population), 27% had experienced more than one. The resulting average is 2.1 mental disorders per disordered person.\n", "As an example, in an attempt to measure the prevalence of mental illness in the Unite...
if space is constantly expanding, are we expanding too due to all of the empty space there is in atoms?	Short answer: no. Long answer: Yes, empty space inside of us is expanding. However, its expanding so slowly that all the forces that normally keep us together are able to counteract that expansion, meaning everything stays together at the same distance	[ "Even if the overall spatial extent is infinite and thus the universe cannot get any \"larger\", we still say that space is expanding because, locally, the characteristic distance between objects is increasing. As an infinite space grows, it remains infinite.\n", "Based on a huge amount of experimental observatio...
Why is it that we are just now beginning to find so many new planets?	It mostly arises from the Kepler mission, which was specifically designed to systematically find exoplanets. Before, it was basically astronomers booking time on a telescope and hoping for the best.	[ "BULLET::::- \"The Search for New Planets (Alien Planets: Anyone Home?)\" – Is there life among the stars? Are there planets circling other suns? Astronomers are ready to take on the greatest challenge in the search for extraterrestrial life: to discover another Earth, but how? The answer lies in extremely sensitiv...
how does the scientists confirm that a planet has water or is possibly habitable?	When light passes through a gas like the atmosphere of a planet or star, the molecules that make up the gas absorb light of very specific colors. If you take this light and split it up into a rainbow, you can see dark lines where this light was absorbed. Many molecules have had their absorption lines mapped and those ...	[ "A planet's orbit in the circumstellar habitable zone is a popular method used to predict its potential for surface water at its surface. Habitable zone theory has put forward several extrasolar candidates for liquid water, though they are highly speculative as a planet's orbit around a star alone does not guarante...
what's the difference between someone getting arrested, indicted, charged, and subpoenaed?	Arrest is done by a police officer based on either probable cause to believe that you are or have committed a crime, or on a warrant issued by a judge. You are detained and subjected to bail and/or other conditions of release (or held) while awaiting trial. Within a few days of arrest, a defendant is entitled to have t...	[ "A criminal charge is a formal accusation made by a governmental authority (usually a public prosecutor or the police) asserting that somebody has committed a crime. A charging document, which contains one or more criminal charges or counts, can take several forms, including:\n", "When a person accused of a crime...
Can someone explain this phenomenon? The coffee in my mug is independent to the motion of myself and the mug. (GIF included with description)	Inertia: the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion including changes to its speed and direction or the state of rest. Plus, low friction coefficient between the side of the mug and the liquid. Equals, the coffee tends to remain in the same place while the mug (and you) moves around...	[ "The phenomenon is explained by the effect of bubble density on the speed of sound in the liquid. The note heard is the frequency of a standing wave where a quarter wavelength is the distance between the base of the mug and the liquid surface. This frequency \"f\" is equal to the speed \"v\" of the wave divided by ...
What is the difference between an ordinary headache and a migraine	To start, migraines are more of a disorder that will happen to a select few sufferers, while headaches are something that can affect everybody. Physiologically, migraines most often include nausea, sensitivity to light, sound, and temperature, and a sensory aura (like tunnel vision) to signal an incipient one. Migraine...	[ "Migraine without aura also referred to as a \"common migraine\", (previously known as \"hemicrania simplex\") is a specific neurological disorder characterized by recurrent, throbbing headaches that often affect one side of the head (i.e., it is unilateral), are of at least moderate intensity, and may cause nausea...
What time is it on a space station?	The time aboard the ISS is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) -- which is a time zone roughly halfway between Houston and Moscow, where the two main control centers are located. So when astronauts wake up (at around 7:00 GMT), it is 2 in the morning in Houston and 11 in the morning in Moscow.	[ "The time zone used aboard the ISS is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The windows are covered at night hours to give the impression of darkness because the station experiences 16 sunrises and sunsets per day. During visiting Space Shuttle missions, the ISS crew mostly follows the shuttle's Mission Elapsed Time (M...
Since the brain is a plastic malleable organ, how does one properly manipulate it to become smarter?	Things that can help improve synaptic plasticity (and consequently memory performance): * [Repetition, spaced trials](_URL_1_) * Concentration * [Sleep](_URL_2_) * Some cognitive enhancers like [caffeine](_URL_3_) * [Diet and exercise](_URL_0_)	[ "Furthermore, even single neurons appear to be complex and capable of performing computations. So, brain models that don't reflect this are too abstract to be representative of brain operation; models that do try to capture this are very computationally expensive and arguably intractable with present computational ...
how can incredibly complex software programs be so tiny in size, yet simple files like movies or audio can be several gb?	Software programs are nothing but text in a file (really binary) with some graphics. A movie is millions of pictures. Its immensely more data.	[ "Since the S/34 ran \"16-bit\" programs, the largest program that could be compiled and run was 64K. Most were not nearly that large. Since memory addresses were stored in 16 bits, a 64K program was often a giant monster RPG screen program with 3,000 lines of code, five or six files, and forty-odd array/table entri...
how do pirates crack game?	It depends on the game, or rather what type of DRM (anti-piracy software) the game is using. In the old days, all you had to do to crack a game was figure out how CD keys were created for it and then make you own the same way. Later on, companies started connecting their singleplayer offline games to online servers...	[ "Puzzle Pirates is a massively multiplayer online game developed by Three Rings Design, a company acquired by Sega Sammy Holdings in 2011. The player takes the role of a pirate, adventuring on the high seas and pillaging money (\"pieces of eight\") from roaming enemy ships (human or computer-controlled). The mechan...
why don't food products contain braille? why aren't they blind friendly?	Not a bad question. In terms of reading nutritional information I can see the benefit. In terms of picking out food, it would still be extraordinarily difficult to shop for food and therefore pointless in that sense. A better system would be a braille kiosk that functioned like a catalogue and coincided with braille ...	[ "The blind community of Sri Lanka is alienating gradually from the use of braille due to a number of reasons. A recent survey reveals that only 15% of blind people use braille. Today, braille usage is limited to examination purposes in educational institutions. It is worth inquiring as to what could be the possible...
if each parent gives half the chromosomes needed for a baby, how do they keep from overlapping some and missing others?	Our somatic cells (the ones that form all our body) have two pairs of each chromossome. Even though they carry the same functions, they're not identical, that's what lead to variations in our characteristics. In the reproductive cells formation, there is first a specialized somatic cell. During it's division, it develo...	[ "If the chromosome pairs fail to separate properly during cell division, the egg or sperm may end up with a second copy of one of the chromosomes. (\"See\" non-disjunction.) If such a gamete results in fertilization and an embryo, the resulting embryo may also have an entire copy of the extra chromosome.\n", "The...
Do you favour the "Dark Matter" hypothesis, or do you feel that the statement "Perhaps we simply don't understand gravity well enough" is a more plausible solution?	So we haven't ruled out alternate gravity theories, but the majority of astronomers are definitely in the WIMP dark matter camp. There are alternate gravity people, but it hasn't really caught on at all. But yet, in the general public people seem to think of dark matter as some sort of weird phlogiston theory, and that...	[ "BULLET::::- Sabine Hossenfelder and Stacy S. McGaugh, \"Is Dark Matter Real? Astrophysicists have piled up observations that are difficult to explain with dark matter. It is time to consider that there may be more to gravity than Einstein taught us\", \"Scientific American\", vol. 319, no. 2 (August 2018), pp. 36–...
Does headbanging, dancing, and rapid velocity shifting movements (sports and such), aerobic neck workouts, etc cause brain damage?	You're basically asking two different questions (even though you didn't necessarily know you were... how exciting). 1.)The first is, "Can [the activities you listed] cause a concussion/brain injury?" A concussion occurs when there is a sufficient level of force applied to the brain that causes alterations in norm...	[ "Another hazard, susceptibility of the brain to shearing forces, plays a role primarily in injuries that involve rapid and forceful movements of the head, such as in motor vehicle accidents. In these situations rotational forces such as might occur in whiplash-type injuries are particularly important. These forces,...
what would happen to us/nature if we planted enough oxygen producing plants to increase the oxygen content of earth's atmosphere by 1%? 5%? 10%?	Higher oxygen content would do two things I can think of off the top of my head. Insects size is constrained mainly by oxygen content because of how their breathing systems work. If you increased the oxygen content of the Earth, bugs would get bigger. Like, doubling their normal size. Second, fire burns more intensel...	[ "As aerobic respiration decreases, the plants become oxygen deficient, since the roots are unable to produce enough oxygen in the reduced soil conditions. Decreased oxygen uptake can also decrease plant productivity.\n", "Over the last 100 years the Earth's temperature has increased 0.6 degrees Celsius and it is ...
why are the pi digits so special?	Pi (The number), is not special, but the things which you can calculate from this number is very special. Without Pi we could not be able to calculate the surface area and volume of curved faced objects reliably.	[ "Pi certainly seems to behave this way. In the first six billion decimal places of pi, each of the digits from 0 through 9 shows up about six hundred million times. Yet such results, conceivably accidental, do not prove normality even in base 10, much less normality in other number bases.\n", "While the PiHex pro...
Do you think with current science and technology, that we could start a colony on another planet?	Mars is pretty different to Earth. The atmosphere is about 1% of the thickness of Earth's - it would basically feel like a vacuum to any Earth organism. It also gets less than half the heat the Earth does. So you would need to pump in a lot of gas to make the air breathable, and to trap the heat in. It is easy to unde...	[ "Millions of dollars have been invested in these colonization projects by private companies. The first to inhabit the new colonies are selected following reconnaissance missions to the newly discovered planets, and the United Nations has put in place a charter regulating the colonization of new planets. Most notabl...
Why did the IWW decline so much by the early 1920s?	The 1907 trial of Big Bill Haywood in Idaho for the murder of former Governor Frank Steunenburg was a first ordeal for the upstart union, and also the most amazing event in US labor history. Read Big Trouble by J Anthony Lucas for the incredible story, a tapestry of American society of the time. Haywood's lawyer was ...	[ "In spite of \"anti-radical hysteria\" during and just after the war years, the IWW continued to grow. The IWW's peak membership probably occurred in 1923. 1924 would see the beginning of a dramatic decline, and the recent repression would work to exacerbate the internal tensions responsible for that decline.\n", ...
why is iraq considered an arab state rather than a persian(iranian) one?	Iraq is a (mostly) Arabic speaking country, full of people who consider themselves Arabs. Iran is not - it is neither Arabic speaking nor do the people consider themselves Arabs (though there's a minority of Arabs living there). None of the countries whose names end with -stan contain a majority of Arabs. I can't thi...	[ "Due to Iraq's inherent multiculturalism as well as history, Iraqi Arabic in turn bears extensive borrowings in its lexicon from Aramaic, Akkadian, Persian, Turkish, the Kurdish languages and Hindustani. The inclusion of Mongolian and other Turkic elements in the Iraqi Arabic dialect should also be mentioned, becau...
Is there a 'fantastic planet' out there? Could there be a terrestrial planet thousands of times the size of Earth, orbiting a Sun thousands of times as big as ours, inhabited by giant humanoids?	There are other scaling problems than just oxygen absorption. Strength is approximately related to the cross-sectional area of a muscle, but mass is proportional to volume. If you double in height your muscle cross section, and thus strength, go up by a factor of 4 but your weight goes up by a factor of 8. If you scale...	[ "Caltech researchers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown have hypothesised the existence of a giant planet in the outer Solar System, nicknamed Planet Nine. The planet would be about 10 times as massive as Earth. It would have a highly eccentric orbit, and its average distance from the Sun would be about 20 times tha...
why, on the news, is there a large delay for live feeds across oceans but we can play xbox live with people around the world with seemingly instantaneous response?	Live TV broadcasts use geostationary satellites which orbit 22 thousand miles up. So a satellite feed has to go 22,000 miles from the broadcast truck to the satellite (actually it will be more as the satellite will not be directly overhead), then 22,000 miles back to the broadcast center. If the broadcast is from very ...	[ "New forms of digital media have also allowed viewers to watch coverage through alternative means. \"With games airing live on cell phones and computers, the World Cup will get more online coverage than any major sporting event yet,\" said Jake Coyle of the Associated Press.\n", "Senior producer Kip Katsarelis co...
why were so many renowned scientists in the 19th-20th centuries from germany and austria?	We still do! My friend went to Germany recently. The majority of texts in Chemistry are all German. The US has Tech but I can't begin to list the developments in Europe.	[ "Austria was the cradle of numerous scientists with international reputation. Among them are Ludwig Boltzmann, Ernst Mach, Victor Franz Hess and Christian Doppler, prominent scientists in the 19th century. In the 20th century, contributions by Lise Meitner, Erwin Schrödinger and Wolfgang Pauli to nuclear research a...
What other dating systems were widely used other than B.C. and A.D.? When were those systems replaced?	The Japanese used nengo (年号), eras declared by the imperial court. They didn't have a set length and a new era could be declared for any of a number of reasons: a new Emperor taking the throne, a natural disaster, astrology, etc. The longest nengo lasted for thirty-five years, but the majority were less than a deca...	[ "Computer dating systems of the later 20th century, especially popular in the 1960s and 1970s, before the rise of sophisticated phone and computer systems, gave customers forms that they filled out with important tolerances and preferences, which were \"matched by computer\" to determine \"compatibility\" of the tw...
Do the laws of physics predict that the universe was spontaneously created from nothing?	it's a little simplified. saying "created out of nothing" sort of implies that there was nothingness beforehand, which is incorrect. Time itself was created then, so there was no 'beforehand.' I don't think I helped. This is a difficult concept.	[ "Cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, in his article \"Our Spontaneous Universe\", wrote that \"there are remarkable, testable arguments that provide firmer empirical evidence of the possibility that our universe arose from nothing. ... If our universe arose spontaneously from nothing at all, one might predict that its tot...
By the 15th century, was the army of the Holy Roman Empire, an army of the empire, or of the emperor's own vassals and land?	One of the big issues when it comes to English speakers and the Holy Roman Empire is that we translate two words as 'Imperial' that have different meanings in German. We tend to translate both Reichs- and Kaiserliche- as 'Imperial', when--in German--the former refers more to the institutions and idea of the realm/e...	[ "The Holy Roman Empire was a fragmented collection of largely independent states (a fragmentation that the Peace of Westphalia would solidify). The position of the Holy Roman Emperor was mainly titular, but the emperors, from the House of Habsburg, also directly ruled a large portion of imperial territory (lands of...
Did epicanthic folds evolve separately in different parts of the planet or were they spread from a certain focal point?	It pains me that I can't remember the source (a book tracing human migration through separate studies of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA), but I do remember reading that originally all homo sapiens had epicanthic folds, and a mutation in the population that eventually migrated to western Europe resulted in that group los...	[ "Epicanthic folds also occur, at a considerably lower frequency, in other populations: Europeans (e.g., Scandinavians, English, Irish, Hungarians, Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Finns, Estonians and Samis), Western Asians, Nilotes and Amazigh people. The degree of development of the fold between individuals varies g...
how do states like monaco and singapore make so much money and have low taxes?	Singaporean here. We are rich because we have low corporate taxes. When it comes to high-skilled, high-salaried industries like banking, petroleum and medicine, the operating costs (skilled labour, input materials, energy costs) are the same worldwide. Even though land is expensive here, over the Long run of a company’...	[ "Some low-income countries have relatively high tax-to- GDP ratios due to resource tax revenues (e.g. Angola) or relatively efficient tax administration (e.g. Kenya, Brazil) whereas some middle-income countries have lower tax-to-GDP ratios (e.g. Malaysia) which reflect a more tax-friendly policy choice.\n", "Mona...
Did nations/national identity exist before the modern age?	It really depends on what you mean by national identity. National identity definitely did exist to a degree but was not expressed in exactly the same ways as we do in the modern era. Pre modern national identity is not the same as modern nationalism and the reason why this is the case but I recommend the 'Invention of ...	[ "In his book \"Biblical Ideas of Nationality: Ancient and Modern\", Grosby argues that the ideas of modern nationhood were already present in the Ancient Near East in places like Armenia, Edom, Egypt, and especially Biblical Israel, which later became the major model for European nation formation.\n", "All modern...
Would an object falling in a vacuum with unlimited space to fall eventually reach the speed of light?	Just working with Newtonian gravity, the maximum speed reached by falling towards the surface of an object is the same speed as escape velocity at that surface (both are calculated by equating gravitational potential to kinetic energy, just in different order). So, what kind of object has an escape velocity equal to th...	[ "Aristotle implies that in a vacuum the speed of fall would become infinite, and concludes from this apparent absurdity that a vacuum is not possible. Opinions have varied on whether Aristotle intended to state quantitative laws. Henri Carteron held the \"extreme view\" that Aristotle's concept of force was basical...
Are there any musical instruments that need gravity to function? What instrument can you not play while in orbit?	Do pianos require gravity? I always thought the hammers "fell" back into place after hitting their strings.	[ "Parts of the instrument go back to instruments made and used by ancient Greek astronomers. Gemma Frisius combined several of the instruments into a small, portable, astronomical-ring instrument. He first published the design in 1534, and in Petrus Apianus's \"Cosmographia\" in 1539. These ring instruments combined...
Do ducks get cold feet in water?	Yes, and that's part of why the entire duck doesn't freeze. Ducks, other birds, and even some mammals like deer have evolved so that the arteries and veins leading to their feet/hooves/ect. pass very close to each other for quite a long ways. As warm blood travels towards the feet, it passes heat to cold blood coming...	[ "These are gregarious ducks, mainly found on fresh water. They are strong fliers; their broad, blunt-tipped wings require faster wing-beats than those of many ducks and they take off with some difficulty.\n", "Adult ducks are fast fliers, but may be caught on the water by large aquatic predators including big fis...
if we can smell an item, the item must lose some particles. does that mean it gets lighter constantly?	Yes. Things also get heavier from dust particles. You get lighter every time you breathe, because you take in O2 and expel CO2. But the amount is so ridiculously small that it's irrelevant.	[ "BULLET::::- \"[I]t must certainly be concluded regarding those things which, in external objects, we call by the names of light, color, odor, taste, sound, heat, cold, and of other tactile qualities, [...]; that we are not aware of their being anything other than various arrangements of the size, figure, and motio...
Assuming one full rotation of the Earth yearly, would there still be zones on the planet with seasons, or that are mild/temperate year round?	The seasons are caused by the Earth's axial tilt, so yes there would still be seasonal temperature changes on the side of the planet receiving sunlight despite the tidal lock.	[ "The seasons occur because the Earth's axis of rotation is not perpendicular to its orbital plane (the plane of the ecliptic) but currently makes an angle of about 23.44° (called the obliquity of the ecliptic), and because the axis keeps its orientation with respect to an inertial frame of reference. As a consequen...
-what makes a beer "good?"	The short version is, it's subjective, and so what is "good" is whatever you like the flavor of. However, you can still discuss beer quality by breaking those qualities down into categories. Things that affect this: * How strong the beer's flavor is. In general, cheaper beers have less flavor (though again, you pers...	[ "However, the most striking feature of \"Beer Bad\" is the twin moral: Beer and casual sex are bad. In a BBC interview, Petrie states: \"Well, very young people get unlimited access to alcohol and become horrible! We all do it — or most of us do it — and live to regret it, and we wanted to explore that.\"\n", "Be...
Why do electrons come in pairs?	Any given quantum state can hold at most 2 electrons, because [degeneracy](_URL_0_) of a state is 2s+1, and electrons have spin s = 1/2. > Also I have read about electron spin, but I'm still rather unsure about what that actually means. It's an intrinsic property of particles, like charge is. There were hist...	[ "In chemistry, a lone pair refers to a pair of valence electrons that are not shared with another atom and is sometimes called an unshared pair or non-bonding pair. Lone pairs are found in the outermost electron shell of atoms. They can be identified by using a Lewis structure. Electron pairs are therefore consider...
what is the theological basis for the westboro baptist church "warning" people about stuff?	Referring not to westboro specifically, this problem arises in a lot of religious organizations as a consequence of human free will and gods plan often seemingly being at odds. Basically even though god has already selected these people only god knows who they are and for those people to know god and be saved perhaps s...	[ "The Westboro Baptist Church considers membership in most other religious groups, such as the Roman Catholic Church or Islam, as akin to devil worship, and states these other churches to be \"Satanic frauds preaching Arminian lies\". The church defines itself as \"Old School (or, Primitive) Baptist\" and sees itsel...
How did the USSR tackle the issue of employment during the decade following WWII?	The USSR went through an extensive demobilisation process following the war. This was part of the vast, and generally quite successful, programme of reconstruction that retooled and rebuilt the economy. By 1950 the Soviet economic production had surpassed its pre-war levels. But on to the soldiers. From a starting poi...	[ "The following table shows the employment of Soviet workforce during the years of the war starting with 1940, a year before the war. A drop of 13.8 million workers in total working population from 1940 to 1941 is due to the loss of European populated areas such as Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and Byelorussia...
how does the hi-lo card counting trick work?	The casino advantage in Blackjack is about going last. To simplify a bit, the dealer will win every hand where the player goes bust - but the player loses hands where they go bust and the dealer also goes bust (because the game stops before the dealer gets a chance to go bust). What this means in practice is that the ...	[ "Each circular player card has a series of lines and numbers arranged in a circle around its center. The card is placed on a spinner, which the batting player spins. (Aficionados would spin the metal pointers with rubber bands to avoid blisters.) Once the spinner came to rest between two lines, the number for that ...
Is it true that Vikings let women handle their finances because they thought it was witchcraft?	We think women controlled the material wealth of Viking-Age households because many wealthy women were buried with a [key](_URL_1_). We assume that within the longhouse, there would have been a locked pantry, and only the matriarch of the household had access to it. Presumably this included food, possibly alcohol, and ...	[ "Nevertheless, it has been argued that the supposedly misogynistic agenda of works on witchcraft has been greatly exaggerated, based on the selective repetition of a few relevant passages of the \"Malleus maleficarum\". There are various reasons as to why this was the case. In Early Modern Europe, it was widely bel...
Are certain areas more prone to see meteors/shooting stars?	In general, no, no area is more prone to observing meteorite events than any other. However, viewing patterns and environmental effects can make a large difference in observed rates at the individual level. Meteors are most likely to be observed pre-dawn, when the movement of the Earth is aligned with the skyward dire...	[ "Meteors, often called \"shooting stars\" are also commonly observed. Meteor showers, such as the Perseids and Leonids, make viewing meteors much easier, as a multitude of meteors are visible in a relatively short period of time.\n", "Meteors (commonly known as shooting stars) streak across the sky very infrequen...
how are sites capable of showing fancy "too busy to load" pages?	Not really. Reddit is stored on a series of servers, and you probably know how that works for the most part. What happens though, is that when you can't access the specific server needed, they often have one set up for "overflow" which is for when the site is really busy, which is dedicated to showing just that "OW" ...	[ "Some websites, especially many image hosting sites, use referer information to secure their materials: only browsers arriving from their web pages are served images. Additionally a site may want users to click through pages with advertisements before directly being able to access a downloadable file — using the re...
Why is anti matter so rare today?	Essentially there are two main theories: 1) CP (charge parity) violations. If reversing charge and parity (flipping in the sign of one spatial coordinate) does not produce exactly the same physics, then the weak force can cause anti-matter to decay faster than ordinary matter. 2) We are in a part of the universe in ...	[ "Another question for astroparticle physicists is why is there so much more matter than antimatter in the universe today. Baryogenesis is the term for the hypothetical processes that produced the unequal numbers of baryons and anitbaryons in the early universe, which is why the universe is made of matter today, and...
If I am traveling through space at the speed of light then how fast is the light from my spaceships headlights moving?	The light from your headlights will propagate at exactly the speed of light, as for you and for any outside observer. The Problem with your argumentation is the same with which any relativity discussion starts, that time is a fixed thing. According to Einsteins theory however, this is not true. The only thing that stay...	[ "Rather than exceeding the speed of light within a local reference frame, a spacecraft would traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective faster-than-light travel. Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime; instead, the Al...
what is the difference between regular 3d and other types like imax 3d ?	The IMAX 3D projector delivers 3D images of unsurpassed brightness and clarity, unlike any other 3D technology available today. IMAX 3D takes advantage of the fact that we see the world through two eyes. An IMAX 3D movie actually consists of two separate images projected onto a special silver-coated IMAX 3D screen at t...	[ "The two-and-a-half-dimensional (2.5D, alternatively three-quarter and pseudo-3D) perspective is either 2D graphical projections and similar techniques used to cause images or scenes to simulate the appearance of being three-dimensional (3D) when in fact they are not, or gameplay in an otherwise three-dimensional v...
why don't birds lie down when the sleep?	Because they don't need to. They're limbs are mainly tendons that lock in place and many birds hang from trees, it's kinda like how horses sleep standing up (their knees lock) Also if they lay down they'd just fall out of trees all the time. Some birds do lay down of course, bigger ones mainly, but they almost always ...	[ "Many sleeping birds bend their heads over their backs and tuck their bills in their back feathers, although others place their beaks among their breast feathers. Many birds rest on one leg, while some may pull up their legs into their feathers, especially in cold weather. Perching birds have a tendon locking mecha...
Why is the "Water Erosion on the Sphinx Theory" Not Correct or More Popular?	I had a professor by the name of Peter Lacovara who explained this theory in class and why it is wrong. The body of the sphinx is made up of limestone from a former quarry. Everything around it was cut up and taken away to build the nearby pyramids. Not wanting to leave this hunk of rock sticking above the ground they ...	[ "The Sphinx water erosion hypothesis is a fringe claim contending that the main type of weathering evident on the enclosure walls of the Great Sphinx was caused by prolonged and extensive rainfall that would have predated the time of Djedefre and Khafre, the Pharaohs credited by most modern Egyptologists with build...
what exactly are "poppers" and how do they work? people who are using, why are you? why should/shouldn't i try?	Poppers are a type of chemical known as alkyl nitrates. They typically come in the form of a liquid contained in a small bottle; by inhaling the vapors coming off this liquid, a brief high is produced. This is not the same as huffing. When you huff (inhale the vapors of gasoline, glue, solvents, etc), you are simp...	[ "\"Poppers\" are small bottles of volatile drugs which are inhaled by clubgoers for the \"rush\" or \"high\" that they can create. Nitrites such as alkyl nitrite originally came as small glass capsules that were popped open, which led to the nickname \"poppers.\" The drug became popular in the US first on the disco...
Why has the south of Germany been richer than the north?	South Germany being the richer half of the country is actually a very recent phenomenon. Over the course of history, the distribution of wealth has changed a lot, depending on political factors as well as the importance of various technologies and industries. The north used to be very rich due to trading etc. and Hambu...	[ "Growth, employment and household income have lagged behind the South, and the five most deprived districts in England are all in Northern England, as are ten of the twelve most declining major towns in the UK. The picture is not clear-cut, as the North has areas which are as wealthy as, if not wealthier than, fash...
Have there been riots in history that sparked the change they asked for?	I recently read a great overview of US riots-- Paul gilje's "rioting in America". He identifies many, many riots that achieved their goals, from the 17th c to the present. American rioting, he argues, has strong roots in the medieval English system of collective violence by the plebeians, which was generally considere...	[ "The riots came on the back of a period of civil unrest, variously sourced from feelings transferring from the French Revolution, further changes in the Corn Laws, food shortages, and a general unhappiness of the population with their leading figures in politics and law. A proclamation banning \"seditious writing\"...
what makes a doctors office smell like a "doctor's office?"	Most types of disinfectants that you can purchase for your home are scented in some way. The standard cleaning chemicals for hospitals are generally unscented. What you are smelling are the unscented cleaning agents that are applied often because hospitals have to remain clean due to the number of possibly sick people...	[ "Scrubs is an American medical comedy-drama television series created by Bill Lawrence that aired from October 2, 2001, to March 17, 2010, on NBC and later ABC. The series follows the lives of employees at the fictional Sacred Heart Hospital, which later becomes a Teaching Hospital. The title is a play on surgical ...
How could a country like Afghanistan change from being a fairly liberal country to very strict religious?	Rodric Braithwaite points out in Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89, that the 'liberalness' of Afghanistan was only ever really confined the urban middle and upper classes, who were very much a minority, the majority of the rural population were pretty conservative add the ruthless brutality of the Taliban i...	[ "The Taliban renamed the country to Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and imposed an even more strict version of Sharia on the population they controlled. This especially negatively impacted women, who were forced to wear a burqa, stay indoors and banned from working outside the house with rare exceptions, female sch...
why should i not drink from my plastic water bottle if it has been sitting in my car for a couple weeks? does it matter if the cap is opened or not?	The inside of your car gets hot. Even in the winter, the sun is coming in through the windows. Over time, the heat and sunlight can cause chemicals in the plastic to leech out into your water. It's nothing super bad, but nothing you want to be doing often either. If you refill your water bottles, the chemicals will...	[ "A university student's master's thesis incorrectly suggested that repeatedly rewashing plastic water bottles can lead to the leaking diethylhydroxylamine (DEHA) into the drinking water, and can be detrimental to human health. The results of this research were repeated by various sources and also became a chain ema...
Caffeinated Soap Bar, could this even work? How effective is the skin at absorbing chemicals?	That might have interesting effects on kids who swear in front of their mothers. That said, to cross the skin barrier usually requires some sort of solvent to carry the molecule, DMSO is a good one. I wonder if the mint scent does more to wake you up than the caffeine. Plus, I've never heard of PEG being called a "har...	[ "The addition of peppermint oil to the body soap is widely considered to help to stimulate the user's senses to effect an alert state in the user, as caffeine's ability to meaningfully diffuse through human skin is extremely limited and, as a result, users will generally not receive a meaningful dose of the drug th...
what's the point of having and operating cctv if you can rarely actually identify anyone using it?	people are less likely to commit crimes if they know they are being recorded imho	[ "Using VRI for medical, legal and mental health settings is seen as controversial by some in the deaf community, where there is an opinion that it does not provide appropriate communication access—particularly in medical settings where the patient's ability to watch the screen or sign clearly to the camera may be c...
how can words people use all the time "not be words." who decides when something is a word?	when enough people think it is a word, it is a word. The fact people understand it without explanation just helps it along to becoming a word. You have to realize, no word ever existed until people started using it.	[ "The word is an example of \"Time\" magazine's habit of supplying new words through \"unusual use of affixes\", although \"Time\" itself objected to the term's inclusion in the 1991 \"Random Webster's College Dictionary\", citing it as an example of the dictionary \"straining ... to avoid giving offense, except to ...
Why don't Japanies swords have crossguards?	While there were some (elaborately decorated) cross-guards invented in the Edo period called katanatsuba (刀鍔) and another type called mamorokobushi (護拳) katanas generally lacked cross guards and hand protections for the simple reason that they were quick withdraw* (not primarily for thrusting however, as I've been ...	[ "For protection and preservation, a polished Japanese sword needs a scabbard. A fully mounted scabbard (\"koshirae\") may consist of a lacquered body, a taped hilt, a sword guard (\"tsuba\") and decorative metal fittings. Though the original purpose was to protect a sword from damage, from early times on Japanese s...
Was oral hygiene, or lack thereof, ever a deterrent for people to kiss before contemporary methods became available?	I am not knowledgeable enough on historical oral hygiene practices to answer the first part of your question. However, I can answer your second question: > Has kissing always been a part of people's love lives? Well, prior to written history, we have a hard time concluding whether or not people kissed. There are va...	[ "In many human cultures, the act of premastication and direct mouth-to-mouth feeding is linked with the showing of affection, known as \"kiss feeding\". In the Manus cultures of the Admiralty Islands, the act of premastication has been used by a women to remind children and descendants of their obligations to her. ...
the u.s. president is accused of a violent crime; what happens next?	The House of Representatives impeaches him and the Senate holds a trial with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding. He can't pardon himself in this case.	[ "Threatening the President of the United States is a federal felony under United States Code Title 18, Section 871. It consists of knowingly and willfully mailing or otherwise making \"any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States\". This also includes ...
Did people in British colonies (eg. Canada, Australia, New Zealand) consider themselves British or did they moreover identify with the colony?	You may be interested in my answers in these previous threads: * [At what point did Australians and New Zealanders begin to consider themselves as distinct from the British?](_URL_1_) * [Why did Great Britain grant independence/autonomy to Australia and Canada? Was it political necessity or were there economic concer...	[ "The colonies were very different from one another but they were still a part of the British Empire in more than just name. Demographically, the majority of the colonists traced their roots to the British Isles and many of them still had family ties with Great Britain. Socially, the colonial elite of Boston, New Yo...
why is that that wires can be bundled together without interfering with each others signals?	They can, it's called crosstalk and it's a big design problem. Normally the signals are small enough that the interference is minimal, and can be fixed by spacing the wires apart. When that doesn't work, foil shielding is used. And if that doesn't work, you can use balanced connections. A balanced connection is when ...	[ "The wires are also twisted together, to reduce interference from electromagnetic induction. A twisted pair makes the loop area between the conductors as small as possible, and ensures that a magnetic field that passes equally through adjacent loops will induce equal levels of noise on both lines, which is canceled...
How widespread was anarchism as a political movement?	Here's the start of an answer: "Anarchism" was not a widely used keyword until 1880 or so, around the time of the establishment of the The International Working People's Association or "Black International." Prior to that, anarchist ideas played a role in organizations like the International Association of the 1850s an...	[ "Anarchism as a social movement has regularly endured fluctuations in popularity. Its classical period, which scholars demarcate as from 1860 to 1939, is associated with the working-class movements of the 19th century and the Spanish Civil War-era struggles against fascism.\n", "Anarchism in the United States beg...
Why is the Bering Strait never mentioned in the Cold War?	It's something like 4000 miles from there to Moscow, and 2000 miles to California. In both cases most of the trip would be across wilderness terrain with no major roads or infrastructure to speak of. In the age of nuclear weapons, the war would be over long before an army crossing the Bering Strait reached anything rem...	[ "During the Cold War, the Bering Strait marked the border between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Diomede Islands—Big Diomede (Russia) and Little Diomede (US)—are only apart. Traditionally, the indigenous peoples in the area had frequently crossed the border back and forth for \"routine visits, seasonal...
In Ancient Rome, who would act as the police detectives? Who would try to figure out who’s guilty for murders so they could have a trial? What methods for investigation would they use?	There have been a few previous answers that might be helpful here: [How easy was it for fugitives to evade capture in the Roman Empire?](_URL_3_) by [u/mpixieg](_URL_2_) [How were crimes investigated in Roman times?](_URL_1_) by [u/AwesomeDog59](_URL_4_) And a couple by me: [Prior to DNA evidence, finger prints, et...	[ "BULLET::::- Criminal enforcement is largely private in Ancient Rome; unlike today, there is no public system of enforcement, such as a prosecuting attorney ostensibly bringing a case on behalf of the community (e.g., \"People vs. _______\", or \"Crown vs. ________\".) For instance, Celer confesses to murder in the...
what information can i get from a barometer and how can it be useful for me?	Barometers can be used to predict the weather or estimate your altitude. If you put your phone in a bag and submerge it underwater, you can use a bit of math to measure its depth. Most useful stuff the barometer can do, apps already do.	[ "A barometer can also be found in smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Galaxy S3-S6, Motorola Xoom, Apple iPhone 6 smartphones, and Timex Expedition WS4 smartwatch, based on MEMS and piezoresistive pressure-sensing technologies. Inclusion of barometers on smartphones was originally intended to prov...
how can people argue for mandatory drug testing to receive government benefits? doesnt this violate the constitution through self incrimination? doesnt testing for bac when pulled over also do this?	You are not legally entitled to most government benefits; you must be eligible. If not using illegal drugs is a condition for eligibility, then you can be required to prove that to obtain the benefits. That's not unconstitutional, because you're not being compelled to do anything--it is your choice to seek the benefit ...	[ "A study in 2004 by the Independent Inquiry into Drug Testing at Work found that attempts by employers to force employees to take drug tests could potentially be challenged as a violation of privacy under the Human Rights Act 1998 and Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. However, this does not appl...
How common was interfaith marriage on the medieval ages?	Great question! In the twelfth century Latin Christian attitudes to this question were rather conflicted. On the one hand you have categorical prohibitions against miscegenation and on the other you have early depictions in chronicles and popular literature where such relationships are romantic and quite beautiful. ...	[ "The medieval view of the sacramentality of marriage has been described as follows: \"Like the other sacraments, medieval writers argued marriage was an instrument of sanctification, a channel of grace that caused God's gracious gifts and blessings to be poured upon humanity. Marriage sanctified the Christian coupl...
If the universe is supposedly infinite, if we traveled in a straight line, given enough time, would be end up at the initial departure point?	> would it be cylindrical and would bend back in on itself at the edges if we ever found the theoretical "edge". Think of it as going to the top edge of a map in a video game and ending up at the bottom edge. No, that would be roughly what happens in a finite universe (well, provided it's either not subject to acce...	[ "Hartle and Hawking suggest that if we could travel backwards in time towards the beginning of the Universe, we would note that quite near what might otherwise have been the beginning, time gives way to space such that at first there is only space and no time. According to the Hartle–Hawking proposal, the Universe ...
How did commonly found specialized organs such as the liver originally develop?	The first multi-cellular organisms appeared because of evolutionary advantages of having specialised cells. Some seaweeds, for example, give us a look at what the most primitive multicellular organisms were like - they only have a few specialised cells, such as those that grip rock and those that are involved in reprod...	[ "The liver is found in all vertebrates, and is typically the largest visceral (internal) organ. Its form varies considerably in different species, and is largely determined by the shape and arrangement of the surrounding organs. Nonetheless, in most species it is divided into right and left lobes; exceptions to thi...
How much did the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front know about the German atrocities and the holocaust? For those that were aware of these events (or even participants), how did they rationalize these actions?	Part 1 I have previously wrote answers to similar questions [here](_URL_0_), [here](_URL_2_), and [here](_URL_3_) and it is not really possible to gauge the number of how many members of the Wehrmacht were directly involved in war crimes, not at least because the difficulty of establishing what "directly" means in...	[ "It was particularly difficult for commanders on the eastern front to avoid knowing what was happening in the areas behind the front. Many individual soldiers photographed the massacres of Jews by the \"Einsatzgruppen\". Some generals and officers, such as Walther von Reichenau, Erich Hoepner, and Erich von Manstei...
How often did people trade in money for gold?	Under a "classical" gold standard, money is not convertible into gold; money IS gold. The monetary unit is defined in terms of a weight of gold, and the law defines a right of any individual to go to a mint and turn that weight of gold into an official coin. The circulating media of exchange consisted of both these co...	[ "Only a small number (probably fewer than 500) traveled overland from the United States that year. Some of these \"forty-eighters\", as the earliest gold-seekers were sometimes called, were able to collect large amounts of easily accessible gold—in some cases, thousands of dollars worth each day. Even ordinary pros...
who is it exactly that make money every time i use visa or mastercard?	The issuing bank gets a cut and so does the network operator (visa/mastercard/etc). That's why banks want you to use their cards. Well that and since they're the ones financing your credit they get the interest on the transactions.	[ "Cards may be \"topped-up\" or monthly passes purchased in the following ways: online, at ticket machines, at ticketing offices, and at selected retail outlets such as bookshops. Top ups may be made by credit or debit card, with the latter three mediums accepting cash payment. The card is designed to reduce the num...
umbral moonshine	Perhaps while you're at it you'd like an ELI5 of the proof of Fermat's last theorem, and a simple explanation of the Hodge conjecture? Some concepts are suitable for simplified explanations. This is not one of them.	[ "In mathematics, umbral moonshine is a mysterious connection between Niemeier lattices and Ramanujan's mock theta functions. It is a generalization of the Mathieu moonshine phenomenon connecting representations of the Mathieu group M24 with K3 surfaces.\n", "The name of umbral moonshine derives from the use of sh...
why when you learn a new word you suddenly see it used all the time?	It's called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. It happens with band-names, artists and types of food too. Our attention is quite selective and we tend to subconsciously ignore things we don't understand. After we learn it we have confirmation bias where it seems that something we've just learned about is all of a sudden q...	[ "BULLET::::- 'I'm coming now now', 'I'm coming just now', 'I'm coming now now', 'I'm coming right now': All rather vague variations regarding time. Each repetition of the word \"now\" represents a closer approximation of the typical English \"now\". Three repetitions of the word is generally the most you will hear....
why are there creases in our palm and why are they permanently there throughout our lifetime?	Creases form on our hands in the womb. They allow our hand skin to squeeze and stretch without bunching up. These creases are called Palmar Flexion creases.	[ "The skin crease as a fixed and permanent line, according to their histology, is related to connective tissue attachments with the underlying structures or extensions of the underlying muscle fibers in the dermis of the crease site. \n", "Pustulosis is highly inflammatory skin condition resulting in large fluid-f...
Literary Works on European Attire/Fashion	This is such a very broad topic that there are no scholarly works that deal with the whole thing. On the one hand, you can try Phyllis Tortora's Survey of Historic Costume, which is a textbook that can give a broad overview; like all textbooks, though, you lose the nuances and sometimes it's incorrect on the details....	[ "Since the 1950s, \"Europe\" has issued thematic titles considered as a reference work. It also contains book and cultural reviews and publishes poetry or fiction. \"Europe\" has published works by authors as diverse as Aragon, Jean-Richard Bloch, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Emile Danoën, Jean Giono, Panaït Istrati, Ra...
how do we define when the earth formed?	> how do we define when it stopped being a clump of rock? But it still is a big clump of rock. That's not mutually exclusive with being categorized as a planet, and the actual definition of a planet is rather arbitrary. Pluto is a good example, as it was classified as a planet initially, but the International Astron...	[ "The geological history of Earth follows the major events in Earth's past based on the geological time scale, a system of chronological measurement based on the study of the planet's rock layers (stratigraphy). Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust ...
why is february the shortest month?	Because it was the last month of the year. The old Roman calendar had ten months -- which is why we see prefixes like Oct- and Dec- -- eight and ten -- for what was at the time the eighth and tenth months. In Rome, the year started with March. So, what about the time between December and March? Originally, it was all...	[ "February is the second and shortest month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendar with 28 days in common years and 29 days in leap years, with the quadrennial 29th day being called the \"leap day\". It is the first of five months to have a length of fewer than 31 days (the other four months that fall unde...
why i can't explain to others things like they're five?	There is a little bit of truth in the idea that if you can't explain it simply, then you don't really understand it. But that's not always the case, sometimes what you explain might just be really complicated. I mean, you can explain nuclear fission pretty simply, but the simple explanation is useless when it comes to ...	[ "To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things.\n", "We have allowed our life to become exceedingly complicated. But even now it is still possible ...
what’s the difference between dolby, dts, and pcm sound options for surround sound.	In a nutshell PCM is an open standard for storing analog waveforms as digital samples. Pulse Code Modulation. It's not fancy but it's free and all samples are preserved without a loss of quality. DTS, Atmos, Dolby Digital, are proprietary audio formats that convert raw PCM data, into a proprietary audio stream. They mo...	[ "DTS and Dolby Digital (AC-3), DTS's chief competitor in the cinema theatre and home theatre markets, are often compared because of their similarity in product goals, though Dolby believed that the surround channels should be diffused and DTS said they should be directional. In theatrical installations, AC-3 audio ...
What would happen if we were to point the Hubble Space telescope at the Earth?	From [_URL_1_](_URL_0_) > The surface of the Earth is whizzing by as Hubble orbits, and the pointing system, designed to track the distant stars, cannot track an object on the Earth. The shortest exposure time on any of the Hubble instruments is 0.1 seconds, and in this time Hubble moves about 700 meters, or almost ...	[ "For objects at the Hubble limit the space between us and the object of interest has an average expansion speed of \"c\". So, in a universe with constant Hubble parameter, light emitted at the present time by objects outside the Hubble limit would never be seen by an observer on Earth. \n", "Hubble observations w...
explain this comic to me.	[There's a website for that](_URL_0_) > This is a reference to the phrase context-free grammar, which is a technical term used in formal language theory. The play on words is that Cueball does not provide any context for his statement.	[ "The comic is a satire of American art schools, presented in the manner of a sensationalistic exposé and ostensibly based on Clowes' own experiences at the Pratt Institute. (The story is signed \"By D. Clowes, B.F.A.\" and a Pratt Institute diploma appears on a wall in one panel.)\n", "The Comic is a 1969 Pathéco...
Can stable elements be induced to undergo nuclear fission?	Yes, we can make lighter stable elements split into even lighter elements, but below iron, it requires more energy to split them than you get back. Light elements require more energy to split, and give more energy when fused; heavy elements as opposite -- they require more energy to fuse, and give more energy when spl...	[ "The stability of nuclei quickly decreases with the increase in atomic number after curium, element 96, whose half-life is over ten thousand times longer than that of any subsequent element. All isotopes with an atomic number above 101 undergo radioactive decay with half-lives of less than 30 hours: this is because...
how does a serving of something like beef jerky have 10g of protein in it, when the serving size is 1g of meat?	1 gram of food is about the size a jelly bean. I don’t think there are any beef jerkies with 1 gram servings.	[ "According to data presented by the United States Department of Agriculture, a typical 183-gram (6.5-ounce) serving of a beef and cheese chimichanga contains 443 calories, 20 grams protein, 39 grams carbohydrates, 23 grams total fat, 11 grams saturated fat, 51 milligrams cholesterol, and 957 milligrams of sodium.\n...
how does a processor thread work?	A thread is a fancy way to say a task. Let's say you want to send shipments of Egyptian cotton from Sicily to Malta. If you have a single plane that can fly 500 mph, you have to wait until it flies there and back (a single clock cycle) before you can load it up and send it out again. In that sense it isn't very quick. ...	[ "Threads made an early appearance under the name of \"tasks\" in OS/360 Multiprogramming with a Variable Number of Tasks (MVT) in 1967. Saltzer (1966) credits Victor A. Vyssotsky with the term \"thread\". The process schedulers of many modern operating systems directly support both time-sliced and multiprocessor th...
how can 100% orange juice have calories but something like flavored sparkling water containing fruit juice have no calories?	There is sugar in an orange so there are calories in an orange. The sparkling water might have an sweetener that our bodies cannot digest (= 0 calories), or one that does not need very much to achieve the same level of sweetness that sugar does ( < 5 calories = 0 calories).	[ "The health value of orange juice is debatable: it has a high concentration of vitamin C, but also a very high concentration of simple sugars, comparable to soft drinks. As a result, some government nutritional advice has been adjusted to encourage substitution of orange juice with raw fruit, which is digested more...
Are supernovae radially symmetric?	There are a number of things to pick apart here. First of all, not all supernovae are core collapse supernovae, but due to thermal runaway processes on White Dwarfs. The mechanisms are different, and the explosions in these cases can in fact be highly asymmetric. Regarding core collapse supernovae: > Are coexistent...	[ "Pulsational pair-instability supernovae are likely the most common pair-instability events and are probably common causes of supernova impostor events. Depending on the nature of the progenitor star they may take the appearance of either a type II, type Ib or type Ic supernova. . Like full scale pair-instability s...
why does muscle stop growing stronger at some point?	It takes a constant caloric energy feed to support every gram of muscle. You're evolved to face the danger of imminent starvation at any time. So the muscles grow in proportion to the exercise they get. Which is proportional to your daily activity. They generally stop growing when they are the size that daily act...	[ "Difficulty building muscle is often associated with the ectomorph body somatotype, however other common reasons also include a lack of proper nutrition, suitable physical activity level or not allowing enough recovery time for the stressed muscles to regain their previous state and then grow bigger (overtraining)....
Following implantation of a Cochlear Implant, can adult formerly-deaf patients understand language?	Neuroimaging of sign language is a bit thin on the ground; there's only a handful of studies, but they suggest that signed language uses many of the same areas but isn't as lateralized or localized as spoken language processing (e.g., Corina, et al., 2003; Soderfeldt, Ronnberg, & Risberg, 1994; for a dissenting opini...	[ "Speech perception can be corrected prior to language acquisition with cochlear implants. After a year and a half experience, researchers found the deaf culture was able to identify words and comprehend movements of others' lips. There is a greater opportunity to hear a sound depending on the location of electrodes...
why does water go through your system so quickly?	Your body only uses what it needs and gets rid of the excess. When it notices it has a whole bunch of water it doesn’t require it sends it straight through you. The reason this is good for you is toxins get diluted more and are flushed out faster. The downside is many of your essential vitamins and minerals will also b...	[ "The water from a river can enter the receiving body in a variety of different ways. The motion of a river is influenced by the relative density of the river compared to the receiving water, the rotation of the earth, and any ambient motion in the receiving water, such as tides or seiches.\n", "As it flows, the a...
How did outsiders view the relationship between the emperor and shogun of Japan?	You don't really specify an era, so I'm just gonna talk about the 19th century and the Perry expedition as an example. While planning for the expedition, the US understood Japan as having two emperors, a religious emperor and a military emperor. They addressed the letter it was the mission of the expedition to deliver...	[ "During this period, although the Emperor of Japan was officially the ruler of his nation and every lord swore loyalty to him, he was largely a marginalized, ceremonial, and religious figure who delegated power to the \"shōgun\", a noble who was roughly equivalent to a general. In the years preceding this era the S...
Does Einstein's theory of relativity connect electric and magnetic fields?	Yes; namely under changes of inertial frames in relativity (Lorentz transformations) E and B fields mix into eachother. Super minimal example to show this: static charge, there's only an E field. You change reference frame, it gets moving and therefore part of the E has turned into a B. Said in modern words, this im...	[ "The modern (post-Einstein) interpretation is that the magnetic field is equivalent to the electric field, but in a different reference frame. Since magnetic fields can be interpreted as electric fields in a different reference frame (and vice versa), special relativity connects the two fields. One postulate of spe...
Why No American Aristocracy?	For one they didn't want to create any titles that would have been eligible for representation in the House of Lords which was quite powerful back then.	[ "The United States lacks titled nobility unlike Commonwealth countries. However there are various prominent American families that have held disproportionate wealth and wielded disproportionate political power not too dissimilar to that of titled nobility. Many of these families often have ties to older East Coast ...

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