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Saturday, April 15, 2017

Does reading fiction increase empathy, or are empathic people more likely to read fiction?

Does reading fiction increase empathy, or are empathic people more likely to read fiction?

Does reading fiction increase empathy, or are empathic people more likely to read fiction?

Posted: 15 Apr 2017 03:03 AM PDT

Most research I've stumbled across said something about reading fiction improving empathy, but some people say it's the other way around. Which one causes the other? Or are they both false?

submitted by /u/Aravoid0
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What exactly changes in your brain to make you start feeling very sleepy? Less energy, different mix of neurochemicals, slower metabolism, etc?

Posted: 15 Apr 2017 06:15 AM PDT

Wikipedia offers this sentence:

Process S is driven by the depletion of glycogen and accumulation of adenosine in the forebrain that disinhibits the Ventrolateral preoptic nucleus, allowing for inhibition of the ascending reticular activating system.

...which seems at least on-target. But there must be still more going on and better ways of explaining it.

submitted by /u/OdysseusPrime
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Does breast size correlate to potential milk production? Or are large breasts more like fat stocks for famines?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 02:05 PM PDT

I know breasts get larger during pregnancy, so is that when the milk production really begins? Are breasts otherwise dormant?

If they're for energy reserves, do large breasts protect the individual from famine, or is that fat reserved for potential offspring?

submitted by /u/mtattyt
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Do other primates have the same "fetal position" as humans?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 07:38 PM PDT

Is there a biological/chemical difference in the body of a human being the instant before death-by-old-age and the instant afterwards?

Posted: 15 Apr 2017 03:18 AM PDT

How does water become super clear in the wild? What happens to suspended solids, algae, and plankton?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 04:44 PM PDT

There's a photo that showed up on the front page that showed crystal clear water in a stream (http://imgur.com/kmfy5Um ); some of you may have seen images of the water off the coast of the Maldives, which is so clear row boats in the water look like they're floating in air. How does water get this clear without filtration and sterilization in the wild? Why doesn't algae and other life and biological residues fill it up and make it cloudy? In the case of the Maldives, aren't there plankton in the water? In the case of the stream in Sweden linked above, you can see dead grass in the water; if it flowed there across any sort of land and if the stream or pond has dead plant matter in it, why hasn't it carried suspended biological residues into the water? (And lastly, is it possible to simulate those processes for man-made ponds?)

submitted by /u/Berkamin
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Humans have 'friendly' bacteria that live in their gut. There are four dominant phyla present. How did they get there? If it was based on diet, surely people from different parts of the world would have different bacteria in their gut?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 01:53 PM PDT

Why are African-Americans overrepresented amongst the oldest people ever?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 11:05 PM PDT

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_men and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people a strikingly high proportion of supercentenarians seem to have been African American (plus Violet Brown, Jamaican, the 6th oldest person ever, and James Sisnett, Barbadian, 14th oldest man ever). Has this ever been investigated?

submitted by /u/Lipno
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My local highway passes through farmland, and a lot of flying bugs die hitting our windshields. By killing all these bugs, could our cars be exerting evolutionary pressure? Note: there is a grass median between the north & south lanes -- a sort of island ecosystem.

Posted: 15 Apr 2017 01:40 AM PDT

Second time asking (with revised text) because no answers the first time.

submitted by /u/thefourthchipmunk
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What is the physics of snapping your fingers?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 06:28 PM PDT

I mean, what is it that actually causes the snap sound? Is it your fingers vibrating? Or is it the force of your finger hitting your palm?

submitted by /u/CombativeCanuck
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How do newborns, human and non-human, know to look at the eyes when looking at another living thing?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 11:23 AM PDT

How do cells stick together?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 09:27 AM PDT

We are formed of tissues that can be fairly strong! We can't for example take a handfull of our cells easily. How do they stick so well together?

submitted by /u/livediekill
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How are quantum tunneling in stars and their weight associated with each other?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 04:45 PM PDT

Hey askscience!

So today a friend asked me about the nuclear fusion inside the sun, and I gave the explanation that it occurs in the sun's core due to the sheer pressure within itself that allows the helium atoms to overcome the coulomb force and fuse together into helium.

I know that that is at least inaccurate, but since I can't explain quantum tunneling appropriately and I have heard so many versions of the explanation I chose to give all over, I thought it would be best to mistrust my gut feeling and gave the answer mentioned above.

So is my answer widely false or just inaccurate? Is there just a correlation between the sun's mass and quantum tunneling (i.e. lots of protons necessary for quantum tunneling having the effect you can observe every day = lots of protons to make up all that mass) or is there a bit of causation as well (i.e. the mass is helping quantum tunneling to Some extent)?

Edit: also yeah, should be 'mass' instead of 'weight' in the title

submitted by /u/Remarqueable
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Is the ISS really at orbital height if it needs routine re-boosting?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 10:35 AM PDT

moments after the big bang, if all matter was inside the swarzchild radius, why didn't gigantic black hole form?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 12:09 PM PDT

What is it about microwaving plastic packaging that makes it unsafe?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 01:07 PM PDT

I microwaved a soy sauce packet in my food container and I don't know if it's safe to eat the food now?

submitted by /u/TzucciMane
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How is an action potential generated in the nerve receptor cells of the nose?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 01:34 PM PDT

If clothes are made of 100% cotton, and cotton is an organic plant, why don't clothes mold, spoil, decompose (rapidly), etc. like any other plant would?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 09:06 AM PDT

I know we obviously wash them in chemicals after wearing them, but what's to stop the organic nature of them from doing just that (turning into a mushy, smelly mess, like dead flowers left in a vase?)

submitted by /u/browncm28
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Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder and Melatonin. What are the cellular interactions and/or mutations that cause the disorder?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 11:58 AM PDT

Circadian rhythm sleep disorders (CRSD) fall under an umbrella of disorders that are caused by alterations to the circadian rhythms within the body. Delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD) is a several hour delay in the sleep/wake cycle associated with CRSD. This is the most common occurring CRSD and can result from a multitude of psychological and social disorders.

I am struggling to find information on mutations within the structures/processes of the pathway that causes the disorder to present in patients suffering from DSPD. I understand the genetic component of the disorder and the relevance of CLOCK genes. Would anyone be able to elaborate on the cellular pathway involved with CRSD or DSPD specifically?

submitted by /u/brokebiochemkid
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Friday, April 14, 2017

AskScience AMA Series: I am Scott Solomon, evolutionary biologist, science writer, and university professor, out with a new book on predicting the evolutionary future of humans. Ask Me Anything!

AskScience AMA Series: I am Scott Solomon, evolutionary biologist, science writer, and university professor, out with a new book on predicting the evolutionary future of humans. Ask Me Anything!

AskScience AMA Series: I am Scott Solomon, evolutionary biologist, science writer, and university professor, out with a new book on predicting the evolutionary future of humans. Ask Me Anything!

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 05:00 AM PDT

I'm Scott Solomon, an evolutionary biologist, science writer, and university professor. My new book, Future Humans: Inside the Science of Our Continuing Evolution, considers how we can use science to make informed predictions about our evolutionary future. Recent research suggests that humans are indeed still evolving, but modernization is affecting the way that natural selection and other mechanisms of evolution affect us today. Technology, medicine, demographic changes, and globalization all seem to be having an impact on our ongoing evolution. But our long-term fate as a species may depend on how we choose to utilize emerging technologies, like CRISPR gene editing or the ability to establish permanent colonies on other planets.

I'll be on between 3-5pm eastern (19-21 UT). AMA!

submitted by /u/AskScienceModerator
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What's the estimated pressure on Enceladus' sub-surface ocean?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 04:00 PM PDT

Recently NASA made a press release discussing the possibility of life in Enceladus' sub-surface ocean.

Enceladus is much smaller than Earth and therefore has far weaker gravity, which would correlate with smaller pressure at a given altitude. However, its ocean seems to occupy a larger percentage of the planet's volume compared to Earth's, in addition to being buried under a thick sheet of ice.

Given Enceladus' size, gravity, and nature of it's sub-surface ocean, what would its water pressure ranges be? Could a human swim in it without a pressure suit? Could a submarine reach any depth?

Bonus question is to estimate the temperature range of the ocean. Since it's liquid, it'd have to be above zero celsius unless it's highly saline. Is there expected geothermal or tidal friction heating? How warm would it be purely from solar exposure, or radiation coming from Saturn?

submitted by /u/GeneReddit123
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Does antimatter reflect photons?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 05:57 PM PDT

If we could somehow make enough antimatter, could we see it?

submitted by /u/spodermenswegs
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What is the inside mechanism of an Operational Amplifier? I mean p-type and n-type doped region diagrams and total working procedure on electron and hole movement basic?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 04:34 AM PDT

What differentiates two similar elementary particles?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 03:27 AM PDT

If elementary particles are the fundamental building blocks of everything, this means that they themselves are not made up of anything but themselves. So what is it that distinguishes, say, two distinct up charms?

submitted by /u/jurassic_jordan
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Where exactly at black holes does hawking radiation occur?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 02:42 AM PDT

Apparently some say it occurs at the event horizon, others say much further away. I would've thought it's close to the "surface" of the mass. So let me start here. I assume that a black hole is a spherical piece of mass such as a neutron star, just denser, and massive enough to "capture" light as well as creating a no light zone around it. The more massive a black hole, the bigger this zone is. The more massive a black hole (bh), the less hawking radiation (hr). Now my problem: If hr occurs at the event horizon, the virtual particle escaping it would need to travel close to the speed of light but would be a lot of energy for a random occurence with very little energy (?). If it occurs millions of km away and the escaping particle just barely hits just the distance from the bh where it's velocity would allow it to not instantly get dragged back, wouldnt it just go into orbit around the bh and then not be hr? (I realize we don't really know too much about virtual particle's interaction with gravity, or do we?) Now the only logical way for hr to work for me is this; hr only occurs directly on the surface of the piece of mass. (not the event horizon) Virtual particles are not affected by gravity in any way. The virtual particle annihilating in the bh just happend to travel right into the surface when it was created while the other one just happend not to, because it went the other way and continues to do so beacause it's counter part found another counter part in the bh. In my theory black hole's surfaces are smaller, the more massive they are, because they attrack it's own mass more and don't care about density limitations. Meaning the less massive a bh, the more surface, the more likely one of these hr processes becomes, thus increasing hr effectively. This would explain exactly why more massive black holes have less hr and not more. Sorry if it's dumb or obvious and I am not a native speaker, so sorry for ineffective or unclear language. Thanks for reading.

submitted by /u/luigitrash
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How does one calculate inductive voltage spikes?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 02:32 AM PDT

So yes I understand that the voltage is related by di/dt and we have discussed how to mitigate it away from sensitive components, but how do you calculate how large the voltage will be or more specifically an estimation of Δt for "sudden" changes in current.

I assume for transistors rise and fall times would be a good estimation. What about for mechanical relays and switches?

And semi-related do audio speakers create inductive spikes even though they are rated in ohms? I assume the resistive characteristics outweigh the inductive but could it cause damage to a transistor?

submitted by /u/Iwannabesmurt
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When physicists talk about energy scales, what does that mean?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 07:37 AM PDT

You often hear about what theory predicts will happen at the GUT scale or the Planck scale or a scale of 1016 GeV. What do those mean? Is it saying that, we expect that if a system of particles collides with a kinetic energy of X we expect Y?

How microscopic does a system have to be before you can consider it "at that scale?" Macroscopically speaking 1016 GeV is pretty small, like the energy of a car crash or the electricity to run the average American house for less than an hour, but clearly we aren't seeing Grand Unification in happen in a car crash.

submitted by /u/bigscience87
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How do attractive forces actually work?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 08:54 PM PDT

For example gravity, magnetism and electrostatic. Do particles pull towards each other by some link like an elastic band or do they emit particles in the opposite direction to each other to push them together (if so how do they know to do that?) or is it something else entirely?

submitted by /u/oA1i3No
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Do any species have social hierarchies independent of gender?

Posted: 14 Apr 2017 05:35 AM PDT

For example, it is the lion's role to 'protect' lionesses of the pride, and the Queen Ant is the one to lay eggs whilst the male drones scavenge for food, but do some (or many) animal species have social structures without differences in gender/sex?

submitted by /u/LegitMeerkat
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If all the planets aligned, would the gravitational forces of all the planets in line with each other change the Earth's orbit?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 11:10 AM PDT

[Physics] Do nuclear (or other radioactive) weapons actually make objects radioactive or do they just spread and cover them in radioactive particulates?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 12:28 PM PDT

and as a follow-up if it's the latter is there any effective way of cleaning said object(s)?

submitted by /u/MR_TaTaR
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When crab and other sea animals are hauled up from deep depths and then tossed back into the ocean, why don't they die horribly from the pressure change like a human would?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 03:58 PM PDT

Does the Radial Probability Wavefunction tell us anything on its own?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 07:23 PM PDT

Hello everyone. In one of my recent lectures, we've been learning a bit about Schrodinger's Equation, in particular how it applies to the Hydrogen Atom. In deriving the wavefunction for this, we came up with the Radial Probability Wavefunction, but my professor also mentioned that, despite its naming, it did not give us the most probable radius for an electron to be in, but that was rather given by a different form that took into account volume. In relation to my above question, what does the Radial Probability Wavefunction tell us on its own? Is it a measure of radius, like its name implies, or something else? Or is it meaningless without taking into account volume?

submitted by /u/Quick_Question404
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Why does a wood stove burn more vigorously when the door is slightly ajar than when fully open?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 08:43 PM PDT

It seems like the opposite should be true, since a fully open door is a larger opening for oxygen.

submitted by /u/dentalium
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[Physics] Why does refrigerating food make it last longer?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 10:59 PM PDT

Is there any relationship between antibonding orbitals and pi bonds?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 09:15 PM PDT

Antibonding orbitals have higher energies and I was simply wondering if that is in any way connected to the concept of sigma/pi bonds since pi bonds are typically more unstable/filled last. Does each individual sigma and pi bond have its own bonding/antibonding orbital(s)?

Also, if the conduction band simply corresponds to electrons in antibonding orbitals, are these electrons not still bound? Is the term conduction band not then a misnomer?

submitted by /u/CallMeDoc24
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Why is Single-Mode Fiber Optic named as such?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 09:20 PM PDT

To my understanding in order for light to traverse a bend in the fiber optic it must reflect of the cladding, creating dispersion and multiple modes. What am I missing?

submitted by /u/DigiPhlips
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If Jupiter was to just disappear suddenly and the asteroid belt would start accreting into a new planet, how long would it take for the accretion to finish?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 02:37 PM PDT

How can people be allergic to metal? What does their body do that makes them react with metal?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 01:00 PM PDT

Do objects constantly lose a tiny bit of mass due to emitting infrared radiation because of e=mc^2?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 08:25 PM PDT

How often do 'typical' particles change state? E.g electrons flipping spin in the terahertz range, etc.

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 11:48 PM PDT

My thought is that measuring a particle usually just looks at a brief slice of it's lifetime, and it's usually lost and always altered randomly by the process. If one were track the 'realtime reality' of a vast number of particles, would one expect most of them to stay mostly constant until each interacted with something else, or would it be a 'glitter' of constantly changing spins and polarities? Does the polarity of a photon emitted from a distant star maintain a static polarity until measured, or does it change many times along the journey?

submitted by /u/Ghosttwo
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eyesight, is it rgb, cmyk or spectrum?

Posted: 13 Apr 2017 08:01 AM PDT

I know that light is a spectrum, and our eyes see many variances. and that most of our vision is black and white and blurry, and that detail is like looking through a toilet roll middle.

but do we see in rgb, cmyk or is it a whole spectrum that gets decoded in the brain?

submitted by /u/Hate_Feight
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Thursday, April 13, 2017

If you run around a track twice, the first time slowly, the second time much faster so that the average for the two laps is twice the speed of the first lap. People are getting infinite speed for the second lap. Why?

If you run around a track twice, the first time slowly, the second time much faster so that the average for the two laps is twice the speed of the first lap. People are getting infinite speed for the second lap. Why?

If you run around a track twice, the first time slowly, the second time much faster so that the average for the two laps is twice the speed of the first lap. People are getting infinite speed for the second lap. Why?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 11:42 PM PDT

This question pops up in Veritasium's new video. People are getting infinite speed for the answer.

If you run the first lap at 6 km/h and then the second lap at 18 km/h you get an average of 12 km/h. That average is 2v1 . How is this not correct?

You can also check people's answers here and the third answer to a Youtube comment here. There are also multiple answer videos that say the same thing. Help me not be confused.

submitted by /u/Mack1993
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Do all planets have a molten core? Why?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 06:34 PM PDT

What is the difference between the Fourier series and the Fourier transform?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 09:26 PM PDT

An alpha particle is essentially a helium nucleus; so if free electrons encountered an alpha particle, would they bond and just become helium?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 02:58 PM PDT

Question is self-explanatory, I think.

When unstable elements decay, they can release alpha particles, which are two neutrons and two protons; a helium nucleus.

My question is would this ionizing particle become helium if it met free electrons?

submitted by /u/ArcadeIsland
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How can you derive that bound quantum systems only have discrete energies by using fundamental assumptions?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 08:28 PM PDT

I tried to do it by using the uncertainty principle but got stuck.

If you are interested, here is what did: I saw that the collapse of the wave function that is induced by the measurement of, for example x, has a standard deviation of zero, therefore the standard deviation of the other parameter p must go to infinity. (bad math, i know)

I then checked whether the standard deviation of a sine is infinite (yes) and was only left with having to show that this is the only possible solution. However the sum of two sines als seems to be a possible solution, since that also has an infinite standard deviation. So that is a problem.

Then I realised that the fourier transformation of the collapsed wave function (dirac impulse) is not a sine, but a constant and my whole argumentation went up in smoke...

submitted by /u/physquest
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trapping a floating sphere under a stream of water

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 02:45 PM PDT

During bathtime with my infant, I've discovered that if I pour a stream of water over a floating ball, the ball is trapped under the sphere; not only this, but if I move the stream slowly, the ball follows along as though it were pulled by the stream (but of course it isn't).

I have a vague intuition as to what is happening (the ball is pushed down into the water by the stream, and the water pushes back upwards and inwards towards the ball because of its shape - when the stream moves, it pushes the ball down and away - but the water pushes it back in the opposite direction), but I'm not sure. Need official explanation please!

thanks

submitted by /u/aggasalk
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Can tattooed skin be used for a skin graft?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 12:47 PM PDT

My own (admittedly rookie) research turned up no information. Could a section of tattooed skin be taken from a donor and grafted onto someone else like a normal skin graft? Would the ink provoke additional immune response or increase the risk of rejection?

submitted by /u/redqueenswrath
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Why do we like the taste of some foods but not others?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 09:53 AM PDT

If two free quarks were isolated from each other at a distance, would the strong force attract them to each other?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 10:31 AM PDT

I understand that the strong force holds quarks together, and if they are pulled apart the potential energy is enough to create two new quarks to bind to the existing quarks, so free quarks cannot be created in this manner. It is commonly said that the strong force only acts over short distances.

If two strong force sensitive particles are far away from each other, do they still interact through the strong force at all? Does the strong force really only act at short distances, or is there just no way for us to observe it acting over long distances? Do bound quarks interact with other groups of bound quarks at all through the strong force?

submitted by /u/bondiblueos9
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Why do the half lives of unstable isotopes have this distribution?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 09:05 AM PDT

So, I recently plotted the distribution for the half lives of all the decays listed in a table of nulcides data file that I found online. (See my post on /r/dataisbeautiful ).

I was really surprised to see that the data was distributed so nicely, with two well defined peaks. It looks like half lives are (at least to a first approximation) log-normally distributed, but I don't know why that would be. Can anyone help me understand the explanation behind this?

submitted by /u/HexagonalClosePacked
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How do chip credit cards protect against static discharge?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 09:21 PM PDT

is square root of negative one greater than zero?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 01:34 PM PDT

Do antiparticles have the same half-lives as their matter counterparts?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 06:58 AM PDT

If deleted data can be retrieved, why can't we have our things in deleted state and keep much more space on hard drive disks ?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 04:33 PM PDT

Why does scattering of light increase our visibility of it?

Posted: 12 Apr 2017 10:35 AM PDT

Sorry if the title doesn't make sense but I've been reading about why the sky is blue. I understand the fibrous concepts of scattering and what not but my question is this: If blue light is scattered the most, then wouldn't the blue light needed to observe the color be scattered and not make it to our eye? If all the other colors go "straight to our eyes" from the sky except blue, wouldn't we see white light minus the blue scattered spectrum?

submitted by /u/spork7426
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