Question: What is secondary PTSD? How does it develop?

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 What is secondary PTSD? How does it develop?

I had a friend who developed this. He was teaching/mentoring/counselling youth in a compromised community with social issues such as substance abuse, broken families, sexual assault, residential school ‘hangover’, suicide and so on. The amount of horrendous stories he heard and the situation he witnessed unfolding was traumatic in itself because he has empathy. Trauma fucks you up. If your brain can’t figure out how to process and rationalize what it is experiencing, then there are several common outcomes. Self-harming behaviour, depression PTSD etc. Secondary PTSD identifies that the person didn’t experience the initial trauma themselves.


Question: Why do gas prices include the extra 9/10 cent on the end?

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 Why do gas prices include the extra 9/10 cent on the end?

That is an ancient consumer marketing technique. A very long time ago, people in marketing figured out that consumers perceive a price of, say, $1.99 to be significantly less than a price of $2.00. Of course, those prices are not actually very different, but people tend to round down to the nearest significant digit rather than rounding up when they are purchasing consumer goods. The same is true for something like refrigerators: buyers will look at a fridge that costs $1199 and one that costs $1200, and they will express a preference for the slightly cheaper one regardless of any benefits the slightly more expensive one may possess. Psychologically, that $1 difference between 1199 and 1200 is very impactful. Now, let's change the prices of those refrigerators to, say, $1286 and $1288. Now people will look at the two refrigerators and perceive them both as being essentially the same price (which they are) because the significant digit - 2 - is the same. For that very same reason, both refrigerators could increase in price to $1289, or even $1299, and nobody would even care. If the price creeps to $1300, the significant digit has changed and people start to think they're being hornswoggled. The 9/10 thing is related to that behavior. Consumers ignore the 9/10 and focus on the pennies because that's the significant digit in a gasoline price. This effectively allows oil companies to charge an extra .9 cents per gallon of gas without you even realizing it.


Question: why a lot of Email scams actually look like scams? I have noticed many of the junk mails I receive, utilize random capital letters, bold writing, excessive exclamation marks and poor grammar. What do they hope to achieve from this any why do they not put more effort into their scam advertising?

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 why a lot of Email scams actually look like scams? I have noticed many of the junk mails I receive, utilize random capital letters, bold writing, excessive exclamation marks and poor grammar. What do they hope to achieve from this any why do they not put more effort into their scam advertising?

Scammers will commonly use poor grammar, awkward phrasing and spelling on purpose as a sort of filter. Anyone responding to those emails must not be aware of the scam and or must not be smart enough to realize it is before it’s too late. It’s a fishing method that gets all the VERRY susceptible people.


Question: why do russia and the usa fight in the middle east?

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 why do russia and the usa fight in the middle east?

You have two big countries that both want a powerful economy at home. For that they need ressources from other countries. The ressources are refined and then sold as higher-tier products domestically as well as global. Furthermore, the ressources give energy (heat, power, all that fuels the civil world as well as the economic one). Now if the two want those ressources in the same area or in areas that are important to send ships through, you got a problem. What if the other one denies you the world-wide ressources? Or the paths to get them? Or to sell the products? That would be bad, right? So you invest in military. To get that military to the places you need them to protect your paths and ressources, you need to ally with local powers. Those will support you with their military if you convince them it makes sense for them or allow you to put your own military there. If you now consider that the middle east has oil as well as various strategic value (meaning: there are places that let either russian or US military build bases or support them with theirs) you can answer your own question. It is all about geopolitical security regarding the current and future ressources in the world. The "future" is a big aspect. If you give up one area, the next might follow and the next and the next and in 50 years, you lost all areas of influence you once had. For example, why the struggle in Syria? Well, Syria is Russia's local power in that region and Russia obviously has a big interest to keep it that way, while the US would not mind if Russia lost their influence in that region. Just look at the British Empire (or the... portuguesian (did you know they had one?)) - neither the US nor Russia want to end up like that...


Question: What makes pancreatic cancer so painful?

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 What makes pancreatic cancer so painful?

Doctor here. Sorry to hear about your dad being in the advanced stages. Pancreatic cancer itself isn't painful. One of the problems with pancreatic cancer is that it doesn't give a lot of symptoms until late in the disease course, which delays diagnosis. When the cancer starts growing, it might invade other organs and the retroperitoneum (which is the back of your abdominal cavity and contains a lot of nerves). When it starts invading the capsule of another organ or the splanchnic nerve plexus (which is an important collection of nerves innervating certain abdominal structures), it starts causing pain.


Question: How do egg cells “know” not to accept more sperm once fertilized? How do they keep the rest out?

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 How do egg cells “know” not to accept more sperm once fertilized? How do they keep the rest out?

The cortical reaction! To ELI5 it: First, you need to know that egg cells are surrounded by a thick layer of jelly-like goop (Zona Pellucida) Sperm cells have to burrow through that goop to actually reach the egg itself. The first sperm to make it through the goop to the egg sends its genetic information into the egg cell. This triggers a kind of intruder alarm, which releases chemicals (enzymes) that turn the jelly-goop into a hard, thick shell. Any sperm that was still in the goop is now trapped, and any sperm that is late to the party has found the door closed. This makes sure that only one sperm can actually make it to the egg. Edit: Because a lot of people are asking about twins and how they come about: Identical twins are the result of 1 egg + 1 sperm- very early on in development the ball of cells that will become a baby (these are stem cells, cells that can become any part of the baby or the placenta, they haven’t ‘chosen’ a job yet) splits into two balls of cells, each of which develop into their own baby. Since these babies started from the same fertilized egg, they will be genetically identical. Fraternal twins are the results of 2 eggs + 2 sperm, each fertilized egg will develop into its own unique baby. This can happen because Mom ovulated two eggs at the same time (the tendency to do this runs in families!). This also means that you can have fraternal twins with different dads, if Mom had more than one set of sperm around when the eggs were available. Fraternal twins are no different than any other set of siblings (genetically) except that they happened to share a womb. Bigger sets of multiples are usually a combination of both processes, or the result of fertility treatments like IVF. For example, triplets may be caused by 2 eggs + 2 sperm then one of them splits (so 2 identical babies, plus a 3rd fraternal triplet), 3 eggs + 3 sperm, or, most rare, 1 egg + 1 sperm that then splits, and splits again to make three identical embryos.


Question: How is a screw that is screwed into a wall able to hold so much weight no matter the size of the screw?

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 How is a screw that is screwed into a wall able to hold so much weight no matter the size of the screw?

Screws are generally iron or steel. A very very very strong material, especially compared to the wood/plaster/drywall the rest of the house is made out of. Which is why when someone in a house breaks or snaps, you’ll see that it’s the other material that breaks, while the screw stays in one piece.


Question: What is it that makes a heart able to be restarted in some cases and not in others?

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 What is it that makes a heart able to be restarted in some cases and not in others?

It's a common misconception, but if you're think about a defibrillator with the shock paddles, those don't restart your heart. If your heart is not beating, a defibrillator will do nothing. Defibrillators work when your heart isn't beating the way it should be, typically this means that the heart is barely pumping at all. Instead of being a normal, strong heartbeat it's basically nothing more than a twitch or a flutter. It's pumping, but not well. This is because of the electric signal controlling the pumping isn't correct, so the strong shock attempts to reset the tempo. When your heart isn't beating at all, there is no electric signal telling it to beat, so shocking it will do nothing.


Question: why do we get random boners sometimes even if we weren’t thinking about something sexual/exciting?

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 why do we get random boners sometimes even if we weren’t thinking about something sexual/exciting?

The penis needs to get hard in order to not suffer atrophy so your body gives you random erections in order to keep it healthy. It’s a hormonal thing and a lot of trans women end having atrophy problems because you don’t get random erections anymore (but you can get them so if you make it have erections you can prevent atrophy)


Question: Why do we need to sleep to repair/recharge our neurons, but most other cells in our body can repair/recharge while we are active?

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 Why do we need to sleep to repair/recharge our neurons, but most other cells in our body can repair/recharge while we are active?

The current scientific understanding (which in this area is quite incomplete) is not that sleep is a time for neurons to "rest". They continue to be active during sleep, just in different patterns. No one really knows why we need sleep, but there have been some cool papers in the last few years showing that the space in between brain cells expands during sleep (i.e. the cells shrink a bit) and the flow of cerebrospinal fluid through that space increases, which is associated in a decrease of metabolic wastes in that space. The hypothesis is that sleep is necessary to clear metabolic wastes that accumulate in the brain, but it's not a sure thing. As something that you spend 1/3 of your life doing, sleep probably has multiple functions at this point, regardless of which function originally drove its evolution.


Question: How does a space probe orient itself?

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 How does a space probe orient itself?

There are several ways to orient yourself in space. As I was involved with building a cubesat while at university I'm familiar with two of them: In orbit around the Earth or another celestial body with a magnetic field, you can both detect *and change* your orientation using electromagnetism. Basically, you use a fancy compas to figure out where you're pointing, and then run electricity through wire coils in a pattern to "push off on" the magnetic field of Earth to change your orientation. Since this uses no fuel, it's extremely popular with cubesats. Around Ceres, I doubt there's much magnetic field so the option that I know of which would work is an observation camera. This can be either an Earth/Ceres observing camera or a star observing camera - in the latter case it's a relatively simple job to program a computer to determine your position in space in much the same way ships determined their position in the ocean before GPS became a thing. You'll need to expend fuel occasionally to change, or for that matter maintain, your orientation. Unless you use some fancy solar pressure trick like K-2.


Question: Why do 'bionic' hands/arms have such stilted and unrealistic animations, when this creepy robot puppet can have such natural fluid motion?

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 Why do 'bionic' hands/arms have such stilted and unrealistic animations, when this creepy robot puppet can have such natural fluid motion?

The robots movements are all computer controlled and preprogrammed. A limb is controlled by the user and has to make 100's of varying movements on the fly in real time, its the human/limb interface thats the problem, and yes alot of money is being poured into it. Just look at military research.


Question: How formula one works? does it depend on the driver or the car? do the poorer teams lose because their car doesn't have the necessary power or because the driver isn't doing well?

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 How formula one works? does it depend on the driver or the car? do the poorer teams lose because their car doesn't have the necessary power or because the driver isn't doing well?

Well - it's like business. The more capital you have the more you can invest and more money you can make. So a team with a good car wins races, makes more money and can afford better drivers. On the car v/s driver front - it's an age old battle on what affects more. It's demonstrably a mix of both. Case in point - Lewis Hamilton, the reigning champion drive a near identical car to his team mate Valteri Bottas but is consistently faster than him. At the same time, Mercedes - the top team have a disproportionate share of the points and have a demonstrably better car. So usually you need to have the best car + one of the best drivers to win a championship but there are cases where one factor outwieghs the other. Example 2009 Brawn + Jenson button - the car was the main force and button was nowhere the fastest guy in the grid. Counter example Ayrton senna who regularly drove cars to positions they did not belong in


Question: what is happening with wall Street bets and game stop?

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 what is happening with wall Street bets and game stop?

Two sides of market manipulation collided. Old money (/wallstret) artificially brought down the price by short selling, New money (/wallstretbets) artificially brought up the price by buying the now cheap stock in masses. And now everybody argues who is right and who is evil. Personally i think it's just everybody playing the game.


Question: Does your body remember bacterial infections you have fought off the same way it remembers viral infections?

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 Does your body remember bacterial infections you have fought off the same way it remembers viral infections?

Yes. Your immune system has 2 parts, the innate system which counters a broad spectrum of pathogens, and the adaptive system which counters specific threats very well. The innate system is what makes “harmless” bacteria harmless. These bacteria have no defence against the innate system and are easily destroyed. Unless you are born without a working immune system / develop AIDS, your innate system will provide baseline protection against the vast majority of pathogens. The adaptive system will adapt to different pathogens it encounters. Antibodies are created to fight off an infection, and the antigen-producing cells remain in the body for years. If the same bacteria/virus is encountered, they will be destroyed almost instantly. Vaccines use weak/dead pathogen to trigger this part of the immune system, and build immunity against the “real thing”. Bacterial vaccinations exist, but are not as common as viral vaccinations for several reasons. Firstly, many bacteria can be killed with the same antibiotic, which makes treatment cheaper, faster and more convenient than developing a new vaccine for every new infection. Secondly, bacteria vaccines are notoriously hard to create. Bacteria have many defence mechanisms like biofilms that drastically reduce treatment effectiveness. They may also produce toxins, which do the actual harm, thus you need to vaccinate against both the bacteria and the toxin. Thirdly, bacteria grow in all organisms. You can use chickens to produce vaccines for human diseases because they will not be infected, but not for bacteria. This makes discovery/production of bacteria vaccines more difficult.


Question: How is something “grounded” (electricity) even though it might not be touching the ground?

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 How is something “grounded” (electricity) even though it might not be touching the ground?

Grounded simply means connected to a large enough pool of neutral atoms. Earth ground is obvious very good since there's a lot of contiguous matter to act as a pool, but in order for something to be grounded it only needs to be connected to some object that can successfully drain off excess charge buildup.


Question: If there is a force applied but no work done, what happens to that energy?

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</answer>
 If there is a force applied but no work done, what happens to that energy?

Force is actually not carrying any energy by itself, only when it is moving stuff (in physics you have to multiply the force by the distance it moves something to get energy). When you are standing on earth, the gravitational force is pulling you down, but the reactionary force from the ground (which is actually electrons pushing each other away) pushes you up, so the forces cancel out - > nothing moves - > no energy is used


Question: Does the U.S. defense budget make the States more money than it spends?

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 Does the U.S. defense budget make the States more money than it spends?

The US Defense Budget is one of the largest job programs in that country. Every state gets tons of money and jobs. The joke about defense programs goes like this: Q:”What’s the best way to ensure your defense program doesn’t get canceled?” A: “Have it built in all 50 states” It’s a joke but fully true. Defense spending means jobs. Good jobs.


Question: How does oxygen get from your blood into your cells? Your blood is in veins and arteries, which must be a closed system otherwise it would leak out, so how does the oxygen get out of this closed system to its final destination?

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 How does oxygen get from your blood into your cells? Your blood is in veins and arteries, which must be a closed system otherwise it would leak out, so how does the oxygen get out of this closed system to its final destination?

> must be a closed system Only kinda. It is sealed in that blood cells can't pass through the walls of your blood vessels. But the walls are quite permeable to oxygen (a tiny gas molecule) as well as a bunch of other things, like CO2. Because of that, the oxygen leaves your blood vessels into the body cells passively by diffusion. Diffusion is things naturally moving from high to low concentration. For example if you put a drop of food colouring in a glass of water, it will spread on its own until the whole glass is an even, pale colour. Concentration differences always even out if they can. So if the blood has a higher level of dissolved oxygen than the surrounding body cells, some oxygen diffuses out of the blood vessels into surrounding tissue.


Question: if someone knows how to play the piano, and sat down at a organ, would they be able to play the organ without any practice?

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 if someone knows how to play the piano, and sat down at a organ, would they be able to play the organ without any practice?

Have played both piano (for many years) and organ (just 1 or 2 yrs) so I have first hand experience. First, the obvious difference is that the organ has a pedalboard so you play the bass notes with your feet. Completely unique skill that you must learn from scratch. Secondly, the organ has stops (the knobs to the side used to change the sound). These aren't a huge difference because a lot of times you might just set the stops at the beginning of a piece and leave it. Thirdly, the organ has multiple keyboards, each of which can have its stops set separately, so each keyboard can have a different sound. But organs and pianos both have a keyboard, so if you didn't need the pedals or stops, playing the organ is just like the piano, right? Wrong. The action (how the keys respond) of the keyboard is different. The piano is velocity- sensitive and the keys have a weightier response. The organ keyboard feels more like a non-weighted digital keyboard. There is also no sustain pedal on the organ so if you want a note to hold, you must keep your finger on the key. With the piano you can cheat a bit using the pedal. So your fingering technique on the organ involves more finger substitution (where you switch which finger is on a key without lifting the key) and sometimes awkward reaches. On the piano a bigger part of the technique is how you strike each key, because that's where your expressiveness comes from. So, yes, someone who plays the piano could play the organ simply, but to be good at each instrument requires somewhat separate skill sets and ample practice on each.


Question: What explanation is there for the fact that ancient artists (especially makers of cave paintings) never drew anatomically correct humans? Were they incapable, and if so, why?

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 What explanation is there for the fact that ancient artists (especially makers of cave paintings) never drew anatomically correct humans? Were they incapable, and if so, why?

Creating anatomically correct depictions of humans takes two things: Very specific tools and years of training. Humans were nomadic for most of our time on Earth. It's hard to motivate someone to creating and maintain tools that weren't essential for survival and then carry them around everywhere. It's not that it is impossible. A particularly talented artist may enjoy higher social status that makes the extra effort worth it. It just wasn't that likely. Learning to draw anatomically correct humans takes a lot of practice. You or I could learn to do so over the course of years, but we also have easy access to lots of scratch paper, pencils, and books/videos to teach us. Prehistoric humans didn't. Nomads had more free time than modern humans typically do, but they don't have any of our other advantages. Lastly, I've met more than a few art students in college who were the best artists at their high school, then plateaued off. They weren't particularly challenged to improve their skills when all their friends were telling them how great they were. After they were exposed to more talented artist, they became more motivated to spend extra time and effort into improving their skills. I imagine being the best artist anyone had ever seen was a low bar to meet when most people only ever met 200-500 other people.


Question: Why are the micro-tremors around fracking sites a concern?

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 Why are the micro-tremors around fracking sites a concern?

In Oklahoma, USA the seismicity due to fracking waste water disposal wells was sever enough to cause damage to buildings and potentially people. Largest I’ve heard of was 5.1. It doesn’t just happen suddenly, but builds in strength and frequency as injection continues. So while a 2.1 isn’t much, it’s potentially a sign that worse is coming of actions aren’t taken.


Question: How do chocolate chips somewhat hold their shape and not completely melt while being baked in chocolate chip cookies?

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 How do chocolate chips somewhat hold their shape and not completely melt while being baked in chocolate chip cookies?

They do usually melt completely. You can see that pretty easily if you break open a cookie right out of the oven, the chocolate will spill out (though not super quickly, since melted chocolate is still pretty viscous). They still keep their shape in the cookie because when they melt, they’re still surrounded by cookie dough (which doesn’t melt), so there’s nowhere for the melted chocolate to go. It’s just a ball of melted chocolate in a chip-shaped hole in the solid cookie dough, so it sits there. Then when the cookie cools down, the chocolate solidifies again into something vaguely chip-shaped.


Question: Thermafrost melting apparently looks like lava flowing, but how? Is it the method of melting?

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 Thermafrost melting apparently looks like lava flowing, but how? Is it the method of melting?

Flowing lava looks the way it does because it's a viscous liquid with a semi-solid crust on top, where some of the lava is cooling due to being exposed to the air. The top of melting permafrost is held together in clumps by the roots of grasses on the surface, but the lower layers without roots turn into mud freely. The liquid parts also move to the bottom of the stream as it flows, while the more solid chunks remain on top. That's why it resembles lava.


Question: Why would you lose your night vision if you took flash photography in a planetarium?

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 Why would you lose your night vision if you took flash photography in a planetarium?

Your eyes adjust to the brightest source of light in the room. When you take a picture, the flash is the brightest source, and so your eyes try to adjust. The rest of the planetarium is not bright, so your newly adjusted eyes can't see very well until they adjust yet again.


Question: How Does a Computer Know Where a File Is after I Save It?

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 How Does a Computer Know Where a File Is after I Save It?

A computer keeps track of files similarly to how we put papers in a folder and put the folders into a filing cabinet. On your operating system, like Windows or macOS, files are put in a folder, which can be placed in another folder and so on. [As Chris Hoffman explains on HowToGeek]( URL_0 ), the largest of all these folders is called the root folder. Everything on your computer is inside the root folder (or inside a folder inside the root folder), and it’s where the computer starts when it goes to navigate to a file. In another [HowToGeek article]( URL_1 ), Chriss Hoffman states that our operating system uses a file system to track all those folders and files. Before describing a file system, we need to understand how memory works. Memory can be thought of as a line of boxes. As Carried Annie explains on [Crash Course]( URL_3 ), each of these boxes represents a specific location in the physical memory of a computer, like a few magnets on a hard disk or a cell in a solid state drive. How memory is physically stored isn’t that important for us though, because our computer handles converting from imaginary boxes to memory locations. Most files are too big to fit in one box, so we need to break up the file into pieces small enough to fit in a single box and store all those pieces across many boxes. In his [public textbook on Linux]( URL_6 ), Lars Wirzenius explains that computers create a list of boxes that a file is stored in to track files that span multiple boxes. We call this list an inode and every file has its own inode. This isn’t the sole purpose of an inode, as inodes also store who created a file, when it was created, and other properties. Finally, each inode has a unique number, called an inode number. These inode numbers allow us to keep track of all the different inodes. Folders work differently on a file system level. As Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau explains in his [textbook on operating systems]( URL_5 ), What we call folders are actually a certain type of file called a directory and they have an inode of their own. These directories are similar to phone books. A directory is a list of inode numbers and names of the files they correspond to, just like how a phonebook is a list of phone numbers and names of people that they correspond to. For example, the documents directory would link inode #12352 to passwords.txt the same way a phonebook would link 911 to emergency services. Arpaci-Dusseau also explains that the crux of this system is that directories can contain another directory, which allows for the creation of subdirectories and a tree-like structure for all the files on the computer. In other words, directories tell us what inodes to look at and inodes tell us what boxes to look in to find the file. To go through an example, let’s say I have a “passwords.txt” file stored in the address “/Users/Bob/ Documents/password.txt.” To get to passwords.txt, the computer starts in the root folder and looks at the root directory inode to see what boxes it should look in to find the directory. Then, the computer goes to those boxes and reads the data of that directory to find the inode number for the Users folder and navigates to that folder. The computer then repeats this process until it gets to the Documents directory and locates the password.txt inode. Using this inode, the computer finds all the boxes passwords.txt stores its data in and loads the data from those boxes. For further information, please check out this [infographic ]( URL_2 )and [video]( URL_4 ) my friends and I made about file systems.


Question: How would (or wouldn’t) canceling student debt help the economy?

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 How would (or wouldn’t) canceling student debt help the economy?

The idea is that over the long term, graduates in lower paying jobs wouldn't be burdened with what could easily be $100+/month in recurring bill payments. Thus that income would be freed up to be spent locally. [And also potentially avoiding loan forgiveness tax bombs for certain current loan forgiveness programs] Basically the same concept as the direct payments for Covid that were distributed earlier, but just targeting a specific class of the population.


Question: What is bitconnect and how have people lost all their money on it?

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 What is bitconnect and how have people lost all their money on it?

BitConnect was a ponzi scheme using their own cryptocurrency, the BitConnect coin. "Ponzi scheme" means that a company offers a supposed investment opportunity to its customers, promising above-average returns (in this case ~~120% per year~~ 40% per month). They intend to make good on that promise by attracting more and more investors, so that the payouts can be paid by an ever increasing stream of money. In order to make this possible, they rely on multi-level marketing: They encourage the investors to do the marketing for them, by telling their friends, family and online communities. The end-game for a ponzi scheme is that at some point, when no more people come in and investors start demanding money, they go bust. But not before the people who created it all siphon away all the money they can. The way this worked here was that people bought the BitConnect coins with BitCoins, and then "lend" it to the BitConnect platform. At the end of it, investors wouldn't get back their money in BitCoins, but the BitConnect coin - which is pretty much worthless everywhere else. So what happened was that BitConnect grew so big that it attracted media attention, and people rightfully called it out for what it was. (Edit) Due this and the recent bitcoin crash, they decided to close their platform, presumably keeping a lot of the BitCoins that people gave them for their worthless cryptocurrency.


Question: How does colliding particles in the Large Hadron Collider achieve anything?

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 How does colliding particles in the Large Hadron Collider achieve anything?

Imagine you have a rock. You know that "a rock" isn't a permanent single thing. It has different parts and ingredients. How do you determine what those ingredients are and ultimately isolate them? You start by smashing rocks together until they break. That's what our ancient ancestors did, and their understanding of different rocks and their properties grew as a result. Now, imagine a subatomic particle. We know that "a proton" isn't a single permanent thing. It has quarks and stuff. How do we figure out what those are and what they do? We start by smashing subatomic particles together. That's what scientists are doing now, and our understanding of the fabric of the universe and its properties is growing as a result. Just as our ancestors eventually went from smashing rocks to forging metals and mixing concrete, we hope to eventually grow from smashing protons to forging matter and mixing space.


Question: How do we move our body parts without thinking about it?

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 How do we move our body parts without thinking about it?

I'm no expert in this field but consider how our heart beats constantly and how our other organs fill their jobs without any conscious effort on our part. It's automatic. They're responding to unconscious signals being sent by your brain continuously. So that's all automatic, but obviously moving your muscles and such is more voluntary. So think about breathing. Breathing is something that happens automatically until you start thinking about it, then it becomes voluntary. Moving your limbs is similar. Your brain is so good at its job that it can help you move your body parts without you even having to think about it, just like it runs all the other systems in your body automatically.


Question: Does Earth's atmosphere also spin with the rotation of the Earth? Shouldn't we be able to observe Earth's spin by looking at the clouds?

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 Does Earth's atmosphere also spin with the rotation of the Earth? Shouldn't we be able to observe Earth's spin by looking at the clouds?

The atmosphere spins with us. If it didn’t, we’d be feeling huge winds all the time. Clouds move due to differences within the weather system. The planet’s spin doesn’t directly affect it, at least not in a small/local scale. If I’m remembering correctly the Coriolis effect might influence it but I don’t know for sure. If the atmosphere didn’t move with us, it would also have major implications for air flight.


Question: Cars have an “idle speed” where the engine still runs even without pressing the gas. What happens when you’re pressing the brake and completely still? How is the engine not harmed since it’s still running?

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 Cars have an “idle speed” where the engine still runs even without pressing the gas. What happens when you’re pressing the brake and completely still? How is the engine not harmed since it’s still running?

Automatic transmissions have a fluid coupling between the engine and transmission that allows the engine to run at low RPM without transmitting much torque to the transmission. Imagine a propeller spinning, making the fluid spin, then the fluid makes another propeller spin. Manual transmissions disengage the clutch so there's no connection between the engine and transmission when you push the clutch pedal in.


Question: Why does Romaine seem to be recalled so frequently, but other lettuces not so often? Is there something about romaine that doesn't occur with green leaf, spinach, etc..?

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</answer>
 Why does Romaine seem to be recalled so frequently, but other lettuces not so often? Is there something about romaine that doesn't occur with green leaf, spinach, etc..?

I'm not sure if the premise is necessarily true: that Romaine is recalled more often. There is an outbreak E. Coli outbreak going on with Romaine this year, so it may seem that way. However, I certainly remember bagged lettuce being massively recalled a few years ago. Green leaf lettuce recalls have happened as well: (example: URL_1 ). The current recalls are so extensive because so much of the product comes from the same geographical area, and produce from one farm may be sold under multiple brands: "While investigators haven’t yet determined the exact source of the E. coli contamination, they have linked the contaminated lettuce to the area of Yuma, Arizona. That doesn’t mean the problem is contained, though: the Yuma area produces about 90 percent of all the leafy vegetables — including all the romaine — grown and consumed in the United States between November and March. That’s also made it difficult for investigators, retailers, and shoppers to determine which specific brands of lettuce have been affected. Lettuce grown on one Yuma farm might ultimately be packaged by any number of brands, as whole heads, chopped, or tossed with other lettuce in a salad mix. And many product labels don’t include information about the growing region, so it’s tough to be sure. Cases associated with this outbreak have been linked to both lettuce bought in grocery stores and lettuce eaten in restaurants." (Source: URL_0 )


Question: Why is the Monte Carlo method useful?

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 Why is the Monte Carlo method useful?

Monte Carlo is basically a brute force statistical method where you do a bunch of random trials to learn things about the underlying reality, particularly when you can't solve it from first principles. A Markov chain is a series of nodes where you define the probability of transitioning from one node to another. Combining them, you'd set a bunch of trials where you observe where things end up after a given number of steps and draw some conclusions. Here's a [cool video]( URL_0 ) of a pachinko machine where you can see the distribution of where balls end up - in this analogy, the Markov chain is where the pegs are and the Monte Carlo part is dropping a bunch of balls. You could imagine adding or removing rows of pegs to change how many steps you want to simulate. I don't know the particulars of the paper you're reading, but if it's about genetics I'll guess the Markov chain is simulating evolution or mutations in the genome or something. The Monte Carlo part then is doing simulations of evolution - you know it worked out one way in reality, but that's only one trial. Monte Carlo lets you turn back the clock and see if that result would change if you did it again.


Question: Why does your body "give up" sometimes when lifting something heavy?

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 Why does your body "give up" sometimes when lifting something heavy?

Let's say your body is a huge factory that does things (in this case - lifting a battery). Your consciousness is the boss that decides what the factory actually does and how. Your muscles are regular workers, who actually do stuff according to boss's orders. They would not know what to do without him. But suddenly the conveyor belt starts heating up and risks to catch on fire. When workers see it, they won't go to the boss and ask for permission to stop working and fix the problem. First of all, they will stop the production (this is what happened with you) so nothing gets seriously damaged. Once everything is back to normal, a good boss would look into the situation, figure out what happened and try to prevent such situations. & #x200B; P.S. It's ELI5 after all :D


Question: Why are eyewitness testimonies used and taken so seriously in court if people’s memories have been proven to be bad?

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 Why are eyewitness testimonies used and taken so seriously in court if people’s memories have been proven to be bad?

I strongly encourage you to read transcripts of a court case to get a real feel for what an eye witness testimony looks like. It's more than just asking a person that they saw Jim shoot Bob. Most often they will use multiple people to build context on the crime. When people testify, the lawyers are often referring to pieces of evidence to jog their memory and they use the witness' testimony to validate the physical evidence. If a video is available the lawyers will play certain clips over and over while asking the witness about details that you can't see. They will also use it to poke holes in their testimony. & #x200B; To answer your question > **eyewitness testimonies used** Because a bloody knife is much more compelling if someone saw Jim holding it. > **and taken so seriously in court if people’s memories have been proven to be bad?** The reliability of eye witness testimony is only taken as serious as the person giving it. If Sweet old Betty who has nothing to do with the crime said she saw someone that looks like Jim jump the fence to Bob's yard that's a pretty compelling piece of evidence. Most importantly of all, you never ask a witness a question you do not know the answer to.


Question: Why does China have such undervalued currency and Qatar have the most overvalued currency while both being highly export dependent economy?

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 Why does China have such undervalued currency and Qatar have the most overvalued currency while both being highly export dependent economy?

When the United States went off the gold standard, the dollar basically replaced gold as the main asset in which foreign governments could hold their assets. Dollar inflows from export sales are being converted into your currency, increasing its exchange rate. But by buying U.S. bonds or stocks, bid the price of dollars back up against your own currency. Let’s say you’re Germany, China or whoever. If you don’t recycle your dollar receipts back to the U.S. economy, your currency is going to go up. Dollar inflows from export sales are being converted into your currency, increasing its exchange rate. But by buying U.S. bonds or stocks, bid the price of dollars back up against your own currency. So, when the United States runs a balance-of-payments deficit under conditions where other countries keep their foreign reserves in dollars, the effect is for other countries to keep their currencies’ exchange rates stable – mainly by lending to the U.S. government. That gives the United States a free ride. It can encircle the world with military bases, and the dollars that this costs are returned to the United States. The U.S. position is, in effect, that we are not going to repay any foreign country the dollar debt we owe them. As Treasury Secretary John Connolly said, “It’s our dollars, but your problem.” Other countries have to pay us or else we’ll bomb them. The military dimension to this arrangement is the U.S. position that it would be an act of war if other countries don’t keep spending their export earnings on loans or U.S. stocks and bonds. That’s what makes the United States the “exceptional country.” The value of our currency is based on other countries’ savings. The money they save has to be held in the form of dollars or securities that we’re never going to repay, even if we could. This is a huge free ride. You’d think that Donald Trump would want to keep it going. But he claims that China is manipulating its currency by recycling its dollars into loans to the U.S. Treasury. What does he mean by that? China is earning a lot of dollars by exports its goods to the United States. What does it do with these dollars? It tried to do what America did with Europe and South America: It tried to buy American companies. But the United States blocked it from doing this, on specious national security grounds. The government claims that our national security would be threatened if China would buy a chain of filling stations, as it wanted to do in California. The United States thus has a double standard, claiming that it is threatened if China buys any company, but insisting on its right to buy out the commanding heights of foreign economies with its electronic dollar credit. That leaves China with only one option: It can buy U.S. Treasury bonds, lending its export earnings to the U.S. Treasury. China now realizes that the U.S. Treasury isn’t going to repay. Even if it wanted to recycle its export earnings into Treasury bonds or U.S. stocks and bonds or real estate, Donald Trump now is saying that he doesn’t want China to support the dollar’s exchange rate (and keep its own exchange rate down) by buying U.S. assets. We’re telling China not to do what we’ve told other countries to do for the past forty years: to buy U.S. securities. Trump accuses countries of artificial currency manipulation if they keep their foreign reserves in dollars. So he’s telling them, and specifically China, to get rid of their dollar holdings, not to buy dollars with their export earnings anymore. So China is buying gold. Russia also is buying gold and much of the world is now in the process of reverting to the gold-exchange standard (meaning that gold is used to settle international payments imbalances, but is not connected to domestic money creation). Countries realize that there’s a great advantage of the gold-exchange standard: There’s only a limited amount of gold in the world’s central banks. This means that any country that wages war is going to run such a large balance-of-payments deficit that it’s going to lose its gold reserves. So reviving the role of gold may prevent any country, including the United States, from going to war and suffering a military deficit. The irony is that Trump is breaking up America’s financial free ride – its policy of monetary imperialism – by telling counties to stop recycling their dollar inflows. They’ve got to de-dollarize their economies. The effect is to make these economies independent of the United States. Trump already has announced that we won’t hire Chinese in our IT sectors or let Chinese study subjects at university that might enable them to rival us. So our economies are going to separate. In effect, Trump has said that if we can’t win in a trade deal, if we can’t make other countries lose and become more dependent on U.S. suppliers and monopoly pricing, then we’re not going to sign an agreement. This stance is driving not only China but Russia and even Europe and other countries all out of the U.S. orbit. The end result is going to be that the United States is going to be isolated, without being able to manufacture like it used to do. It’s dismantled its manufacturing. So how will it get by? Some population figures were released a week ago showing the middle of America is emptying out. The population is moving from the Midwestern and mountain states to the East and the West coasts and the Gulf Coast. So Trump’s policies are accelerating the de-industrialization of the United States without doing anything to put new productive powers in place, and not even wanting other countries to invest here. The German car companies see Trump putting tariffs on the imported steel they need to build cars in the United States. It built them here to get around America’s tariff barriers against German and other automobiles. But now Trump is not even letting them import the parts that they need to assemble these cars in the non-unionized plants they’ve built in the South. What can they do? Perhaps they’ll propose a trade with General Motors and Chrysler. The Europeans will get the factories that American companies own in Europe, and give them their American factories in exchange. This kind of split is occurring without any attempt to make American labor more competitive by lowering its cost of housing, or the price of its health insurance and medical care, or its transportation costs or the infrastructure costs. So America is being left high and dry as a high-priced economy in a nationalistic world, while running a huge balance-of-payments deficit to support its military spending all over the globe.


Question: Why do some animals seem to panic when picked up if their feet arent resting against something?

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 Why do some animals seem to panic when picked up if their feet arent resting against something?

Our turtle, Pebbles, doesn't really care, but rabbits typically freak out when being picked up or put down and their feet have no support. Chickens also tend to get scared.. Cats and dogs don't seem to mind. I think it comes down to the animal's ability to access the situation and determine the risk, also a prey animal is more likely to freak out because it probably feels like it is being carried away to it's death, whereas having contact with a "floor" gives it some security.


Question: Why do you have to refrigerate some items after you open them?

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 Why do you have to refrigerate some items after you open them?

When they are vacuum sealed some products (like Mayo, Ketchup, or BBQ sauce) can last for long periods. However, once that seal (or even freshness seal) has been broken all manner of bacteria is able to get inside. Refrigeration does not stop this process, but, only slows it down. Mayo will stay fresh sealed on a shelf, but, turn after a month or so opened and in the fridge.


Question: How can it take 12 gallons of whole milk to make 1 gallon of ice cream?

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 How can it take 12 gallons of whole milk to make 1 gallon of ice cream?

I find it misleading, but the logic must be something like: 1. Milk from cows is approximately 3 to 4% fat. 2. cream used in making ice cream can be up to about 36% (heavy whipping cream) 3. So...you need to 12 gallons of milk from the cow to get the fat content in heavy cream. This is misleading because when you make skim milk you take fat out. I am doubtful there is NET much wasted milk in the whole of milk product production, but I could be wrong!


Question: What is four dimensional “4D” space?

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 What is four dimensional “4D” space?

A dot fits infinitely many times in a line. A line fits infinitely many times in a plane. A plane fits infinitely many times in a cube. The fourth dimension is something that a cube fits infinitely many times in. Time is a convenient analogy for this but does not have to be.


Question: why do we laugh at certain things?

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 why do we laugh at certain things?

no expert here, but I think it's something in the lines of something unexpected and/or absurd happening. e.g. a joke tells a story, your brain happily follows along. Then in the end there's a twist/punchline which is unexpected and clashes with the earlier story of the joke; this is unexpected to your brain and its reaction is to make you laugh.