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Friday, June 14, 2019

AskScience AMA Series: We're Sarah Stellwagen (UMBC) and Rebecca Renberg (ARL), authors of a G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics article on sequencing spider glue genes. They're massive - the largest has a coding sequence over 42,000 bases long, and could lead to exciting advances in biomaterials. AUA!

AskScience AMA Series: We're Sarah Stellwagen (UMBC) and Rebecca Renberg (ARL), authors of a G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics article on sequencing spider glue genes. They're massive - the largest has a coding sequence over 42,000 bases long, and could lead to exciting advances in biomaterials. AUA!

AskScience AMA Series: We're Sarah Stellwagen (UMBC) and Rebecca Renberg (ARL), authors of a G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics article on sequencing spider glue genes. They're massive - the largest has a coding sequence over 42,000 bases long, and could lead to exciting advances in biomaterials. AUA!

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 04:00 AM PDT

Hello, Reddit. We are Sarah Stellwagen, a biology postdoc at UMBC, and Rebecca Renberg, a research scientist at the United States Army Research Laboratory. We're excited to share how we figured out how to sequence two incredibly challenging spider glue genes for the first time, and the possibilities this opens up for science.

Spider glue is a modified version of spider silk that keeps a spider's prey stuck in its web. Unlike silk, it's a liquid both inside and outside of the spider. Because of this, spider glue might be easier to produce in the lab than silk, which could lead to major advances in biomaterials. There are so many potential applications to explore in the future, such as using it to protect crops from pests instead of using insecticides.

We'll be here to answer your questions at 11:30 a.m. EDT / 8:30 a.m. PDT

Learn more about this work at umbc.edu/go/spider-glue Read the study at https://www.g3journal.org/content/9/6/1909

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SSRIs and psychedelic empathogens (shrooms, MDMA) both increase serotonin levels in the brain. Why do empathogens cause feelings of interconnectedness and empathy when SSRIs often cause emotional blunting?

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 06:45 AM PDT

Does anticoagulant have any effect on existing blood clots in the body?

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 07:02 AM PDT

So I was watching a video that showed a blood clot trying to get through a heart valve and I got to thinking that my diet isn't the best so I could possibly have one/some trying to form. Anyways I donate plasma so and during the procces my blood is mixed with anticoagulant (sodium citrate) and spun out to remove the plasma before being returned, so my question is: does the anticoagulant have any effect on clots that have already started forming in the body or does it only stop the coagulation process from starting? I only ask because I'm wondering if there is some sort of benifit to my body from having anticoagulant in my veins.

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How does radiation (radioactive) affect electronics?

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 07:09 AM PDT

Why don’t clouds get blown apart?

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 06:07 AM PDT

How do clouds stay together in (mostly) the same shapes in high winds? Why doesn't the wind just disperse the clouds like a cloud of smoke?

submitted by /u/jasonmulle
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What is the difference between XVID vs H264?

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 05:40 AM PDT

I just got told that I should encode my recorded videos with h264. I have always been using xvid until now with no problems.

​

I use VirtualDub to encode my videos.

I encoded a 1.72GB video with both codecs on the highest quality that VirtualDub would allow.

H264 gave me a 1.1GB file

XVID gave me a 710MB file

I can't really tell the difference in quality.

​

What makes h264 better than xvid, if anything? And what is the main difference between the two?

submitted by /u/sf8080
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Did fungi ever engage in Endosymbiosis?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 11:37 PM PDT

A random question that came to my mind yesterday:

As far as I know both plant and animal cells developed due to endosymbiosis, does this also apply to the cells of fungi?
If yes than what exactly happened, they can't have chloroplasts inside their cells because they are not engaging in photosynthesis but are there mitochondria inside them or something completely different but similar in function?

submitted by /u/Correct_My_Spelling
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Does the musicyou listen to when you are young affect what you listen to when you are older?

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 05:25 AM PDT

More specifically, if you listen and enjoy a certain song or genre when you are young does this influence the music you like later? Like if you grew up only listening to heavy metal, would you be more pre-dispositioned to like all metal, or even to not like it?

Or are there too many variables and possibility of random chance to have real evidence?

submitted by /u/ZavrosHellstrand
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Can the creation of monozygotic twins be artificially induced in mammals?

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 04:56 AM PDT

Asking because twin studies are very useful, so inducing this at will would probably be very helpful. Can a fertilized oocyte (a totipotent stemcell) be manipulated to create an exact copy of itself? Or is it purely coincidental?

submitted by /u/ColonConoisseur
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How does the brain isolate a sound when we focus on it?

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 04:25 AM PDT

Say you were sitting in the car listening to music and someone is talking to you. We can choose to focus on the music the person or say the engine of the car, but how does the brain isolate the sound we want to hear rather than it just all seeming like one big noise?

submitted by /u/Joe_Subbiani
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What's the fundamental difference between solids, liquids and gas?

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 03:01 AM PDT

To be more precise, what makes the molecules in a liquid pack densely and stay in a container, in contrast to gas molecules which just "float around"?

submitted by /u/_the_cereal_killer_
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How is dating of excavated site cross-referenced?

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 02:59 AM PDT

I am looking to find materials that specifically address how multiple dating methods are being used to cross-reference and verify that excavated items indeed have the age we think they do.

Not a denier, looking for ammo to talk to deniers of the young earth creationist type.

submitted by /u/orwell_goes_wild
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What is the theory that the complexity of a system is correlated to the amount of energy flowing through it?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 01:58 PM PDT

I was listening to a history podcast, and the narrator described a theory that posited that the level of complexity is a system is proportional to the amount of energy flowing through it. In this context, I think he was describing early societies which collapsed after they lost access to resources. But, if I remember correctly, the theory applied to all types of systems, not just social systems. I'm intrigued by the idea, and want to read more about it, but I can't remember who the originator of the theory was, or even which podcast I was listening to.

Who's theory is this? Where can I learn more about it?

BTW, I chose "mathematics" for the flair of this post, but I don't really know what branch of science this theory belongs too.

submitted by /u/quinncom
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Does watching horror movies make you less fearful of “scary” things in real life?

Posted: 14 Jun 2019 01:48 AM PDT

When I toss a tennis racquet, ping pong paddle, or my shoe in the air almost perfectly vertically, it does not just flip. It does a twist as well. Can someone explain this phenomenon?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 12:21 PM PDT

What's the difference between a low fever and a high fever? Does your body just know to set the thermostat higher for certain illnesses?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 12:00 PM PDT

How do we get a sense of "current events" in the cosmos?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 08:39 PM PDT

I just wanna throw this out there... I dont know much about space. Anyways...

Let's just say a satellite takes a photograph of an exoplanet from 10 light years away. That should mean that the image is made up of light that is 10 years old. How do we know that this exoplanet is still there? A meteor could have destroyed it 2 years prior to the photograph being taken and the light from the explosion would still have another 8 years to travel before we saw it. Or do we have a way of knowing for sure that planet is really there, at that moment the photograph is taken?

submitted by /u/Google-me-noodles
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How does carbon capture technology work? Would removing carbon from the atmosphere reverse the effects of climate change or just keep them from getting worse?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 05:52 AM PDT

Can bleach disinfect ebola?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 11:44 AM PDT

I was watching Hot Zone on NatGeo recently, and i in it they use bleach to disinfect everything that has been contaminated, is this actually true? And if yes, do they use the same store bought bleach or is it some special powerful ebola killer bleach?

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Thursday, June 13, 2019

If you are on the moon, does Earth appear to go through phases?

If you are on the moon, does Earth appear to go through phases?

If you are on the moon, does Earth appear to go through phases?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 01:14 PM PDT

Could an animal come back from extinction due to evolving?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 01:59 PM PDT

There's been a post circulating reddit that says about a bird coming back from extinction die to evolution which has been said is fake but I'm wondering could it be possible that animals couple evolve back an extinct species (say the dodo for example)

submitted by /u/quickhakker
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How fast did the extinct giant insects like Meganeura flap their wings to accomplish flight? Were the mechanics more like of modern birds or modern small insects?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 04:04 AM PDT

Why does the continuous spectrum of a heated matter depend only on its temperature?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 02:58 AM PDT

Any simple and intuitive explanation is appreciated. Thanks!

submitted by /u/pkien2001
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Medicine: What actually kills someone with cancer?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 10:58 PM PDT

You often hear that someone "died of cancer", be it breast cancer, prostate cancer, melanoma or something else but what is it that actually kills them?

​

Is it the immune system going havoc and killing all living cells it can find? Do you starve to death as the tumour grows and all nutrients you manage to ingest are seized by the cancerous cells? Infections, like pneumonia?

submitted by /u/Bonterra4995
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Ask Anything Wednesday - Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 08:14 AM PDT

Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology

Do you have a question within these topics you weren't sure was worth submitting? Is something a bit too speculative for a typical /r/AskScience post? No question is too big or small for AAW. In this thread you can ask any science-related question! Things like: "What would happen if...", "How will the future...", "If all the rules for 'X' were different...", "Why does my...".

Asking Questions:

Please post your question as a top-level response to this, and our team of panellists will be here to answer and discuss your questions.

The other topic areas will appear in future Ask Anything Wednesdays, so if you have other questions not covered by this weeks theme please either hold on to it until those topics come around, or go and post over in our sister subreddit /r/AskScienceDiscussion , where every day is Ask Anything Wednesday! Off-theme questions in this post will be removed to try and keep the thread a manageable size for both our readers and panellists.

Answering Questions:

Please only answer a posted question if you are an expert in the field. The full guidelines for posting responses in AskScience can be found here. In short, this is a moderated subreddit, and responses which do not meet our quality guidelines will be removed. Remember, peer reviewed sources are always appreciated, and anecdotes are absolutely not appropriate. In general if your answer begins with 'I think', or 'I've heard', then it's not suitable for /r/AskScience.

If you would like to become a member of the AskScience panel, please refer to the information provided here.

Past AskAnythingWednesday posts can be found here.

Ask away!

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Why F4 is considered to be the stable generation when selecting traits in plants?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 02:40 AM PDT

how does the moon make the tides? is it a gravity thing? if so, why is it not consistant?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 11:51 PM PDT

What is the typical dimensions of a typical feature on a modern integrated circuit?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 11:25 PM PDT

Brief description of what happens in a p-p collision(Jets, pT and missing Et in specific)?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 03:24 AM PDT

So I am undergrad student currently doing a Research Internship is Particle physics. I just want someone to help me understand what exactly happens when you detect Jets. So I understand how jets are formed due to hadronization. (Please correct if I am wrong anywhere). So consider a up quark and a down anti quark interacting to form a top and an anti-top pair which further decays to a b and W and b-bar and W pair. Now these b and b-bar quarks further decay and are detected as "JETS". What exactly are we trying to do with these jets? Are we trying to figure out what particles the jets are made of?

Also about this whole "Missing Et" thing. I don't understand what it is. So consider a DY process generating a lepton pair. So from the data, I found out that when I plot a histogram of the invariant mass, I get a peak at around 91GeV/c^2, which indicates that the leptons were generated from a Z boson. What is the significance of the missing Et and Transverse momentum(pT) of the leading leptons to this particular fact? What do these two terms tell me about the decay?

Thanks in advance!

:)

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How do rashes target specific parts of the body?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 10:26 AM PDT

I came across Hand Foot and Mouth disease which results in rashes on the palms of the hands and feet.

"It's one of the few rashes where you'll have bumps or blisters on the palms and soles of the feet," Dr. Derickson says. "Usually rashes on the whole body spare those parts, so that's one of the give-aways."

I've always thought of rashes as being the result of a physical irritant, so you get the rash wherever the thing that causes it touches you, or it's in your bloodstream and you get breakouts pretty much all over.

But this particular virus causes rashes in specific areas. How does it do that? And the claim I quote above suggests that most rashes don't happen on the palms of soles and feet, so why is that? How are these rashes able to target specific areas of the skin?

submitted by /u/NewClayburn
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Why are equipotential lines perpendicular to electric field lines?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 09:57 PM PDT

Edit: In electrostatic case of course.

submitted by /u/Autistic420yokid
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How do we share 99% of our DNA with chimps, but only 50% of our DNA with our parents?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 01:42 AM PDT

When knocked out how does the body make sure it is always breathing and pumping blood?

Posted: 13 Jun 2019 12:12 AM PDT

Secondary question as well, when knocked out or unconscious is your body in a state of rest as if you fell asleep? Also does the body react in different ways due to the means of becoming unconscious? Such as being hit in the head vs. Not having air and passing out.

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How do blind people dream?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 07:07 AM PDT

I'm talking about people blind from birth. Can they have visualizations? And if so, how can we really confirm if they are "seeing"?

I came across this article: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/dream-factory/201712/do-blind-people-see-in-their-dreams%3famp

Don't know how thorough was the study but if they're comparing to MRI's in fetuses I'm pretty sure a lot of hard work has gone into it. Website is psychology and not a journal of peer reviewed so here I am asking redditors.

My big question is the following: If there are blind people from birth that are having visualizations (let's call it seeing) in their dreams, how can we prove they see the same as us by communicating with our other senses between blind person/non blind person? (By "same as us" I'm implying like a movie in front of us at eye level).

There must be a technical word that encompasses what I'm trying to ask (or even a philosophical term most likely).

submitted by /u/stormboy83
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Was ash from the Mt St Helens eruption visible across the Pacific?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 11:21 PM PDT

I'm a science teacher in Australia and one of my colleagues asked today if I remembered seeing ash in the air after the MSH eruption (I was 7 when it happened). I don't recall anything and I'm not sure MSH eruption was powerful enough (or vertical enough) to erupt ash at sufficient quantities to have a global effect. Can anyone give an outline of how far away particulates were visible?

submitted by /u/happy-little-atheist
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Is there a reserve of animal DNA in case of exctinction?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 03:32 PM PDT

I know there are reserves for diseases and plant seeds in case we need to repopulate certain species. Is there something similar for the DNA of endangered animals in case we need to clone an animal to revive it from extinction?

submitted by /u/haucker
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How exactly did lowering of the graphite parts of the control rods on Chernobyl's RBMK plant result in reactivity surge?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 03:03 PM PDT

There are many sources giving different data on the initial position and the dimensions of the rods, but most suggest that the absorber was located just outside the core when AZ-5 was pressed, and the displacer graphite was located roughly in the middle of the core. Then the control rod begun slowly lowering, as can be seen on this illustration.

What happens next is puzzling, and I couldn't find a good explanation of it. According to the illustration, there are two reactivity decreasing zones (-), and only one reactivity increasing zone (+), the latter stemming from the graphite absorbing fewer neutrons than water while still lowering their speed. But this zone looks roughly equivalent to the second (-) zone, which is the inverse of it.

So in order for this to lead to a positive reactivity surge, aka positive scram effect, aka end-rods effect, there should be a lot more of reactivity going on in the bottom of the core, but it seems that the opposite was the case; in fact, more neutron flux was recorded on the top (see the * line).

So how did the surge take place? Could it be that a lot of xenon-135 accumulated in the middle section of the reactor, and the bottom was relatively free of it, allowing for an unchecked reactivity increase in the presence of the graphite?

submitted by /u/lilfluf
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How tall was the largest ever tsunami that we know of?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 12:33 PM PDT

Whenever I look at a pic taken from space, I can't help but notice the lack of stars. Can someone explain this phenomenon?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 10:18 AM PDT
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Wednesday, June 12, 2019

What makes an explosive effective at different jobs?

What makes an explosive effective at different jobs?

What makes an explosive effective at different jobs?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 01:15 AM PDT

What would make a given amount of an explosive effective at say, demolishing a building, vs antipersonnel, vs armor penetration, vs launching an object?

I know that explosive velocity is a consideration, but I do not fully understand what impact it has.

submitted by /u/AsexyBastard
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Is lightning blue because of same effect that causes ionized air, due to (cherenkov) radiation to be blue?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 01:30 AM PDT

In cherenkov radiation, EM waves are emitted because the electrons move faster than the phase speed of light in said dielectric medium. Is lightning doing the same?

submitted by /u/smellybrownfinger
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How do you predict temperature/pressure relations above critical point?

Posted: 11 Jun 2019 04:30 PM PDT

Phase diagrams end abruptly at the critical point. How do you predict what will happen to pressure in a closed vessel for increasing temperature above the critical point?

I've read conflicting information, some says you can't use the ideal gas law, some says that it still applies to supercritical fluids.

The discussion that prompted this question was whether a propane tank being impinged on by fire could reach steel weakening temperatures before the pressure exceeded the regular burst rating. (Propane critical point 97 C 42 bar, burst rating around 65 bar, steel weakens around 425C)

submitted by /u/Ghigs
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Nat Geo suggested if all ivecaps melt, sea would rise 216 feet... But Nashville according to it's fossil record is 535 feet of elevation and was once underwater as part of an inland sea. How is that possible? Was there more water?

Posted: 12 Jun 2019 03:42 AM PDT

What is the maximum theoretical size for a sunspot?

Posted: 11 Jun 2019 06:07 AM PDT

Edit: our sun, not other stars

submitted by /u/motor47
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How do underwater rivers work? And why do they exist?

Posted: 11 Jun 2019 10:15 PM PDT

Difference between real and ideal monatomic gas?

Posted: 11 Jun 2019 03:06 PM PDT

A level Physics, I have a question about internal energies of ideal vs real monatomic gases, however we havent covered this yet and I don't fully understand what the difference between these two is, please may someone explain?

Many thanks.

submitted by /u/MrCookieFrog
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Why are nuclear bombs detonated while they’re still thousand of feet in the air?

Posted: 11 Jun 2019 01:57 PM PDT

What's the difference between 'Imaging optics' vs 'non-imaging optics'?

Posted: 11 Jun 2019 11:35 AM PDT

Hello, hopefully explaining at a high school level or below, can someone help me understand the difference? Is one about mirrors and the other about lenses?

​

Thanks so much! :)

submitted by /u/zzzjoshzzz
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What do the “A’s” in batteries stand for?

Posted: 11 Jun 2019 01:42 PM PDT

What does it mean and what is the function of having two AA's vs having say 4 AAAA's?

submitted by /u/JesseRodOfficial
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Does the isotope of an element change the way a crystal structure is formed?

Posted: 11 Jun 2019 06:00 AM PDT

Or is the small difference in atomic size negligible and doesnt affect anything?

submitted by /u/KirbyI
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How does the inside of a nuclear reactor work? Specifically the fuel rods.

Posted: 11 Jun 2019 01:22 PM PDT

So along with everyone else I watched Chernobyl and immediately started Googling everything on reactors. The one thing I can't seem to find beyond the basic explanation is how the fuel pellets work.

I understand that the fissile material hits a critical point and starts a reaction that generates heat that's used to make steam that turns turbines. Great.

What I don't understand is what the cross section of a reactor with fuel in place looks like. Where do the control rods go relative to the fuel? Where are the fuel pellets in relation to each other? If they just need to be in proximity what keeps the reactor from going critical when they are installed in the first place? I just can't seem to visualize what the inside of reactor actually looks like beyond the fact that its a series of rods in channels.

submitted by /u/Jackal239
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How BGA packaged chips connect the outside pins/balls to the die?

Posted: 11 Jun 2019 11:27 AM PDT

In old style plastic DIP packages there are tiny single golden wires connect the pins to the silicon die. How modern BGA and PGA/LGA pins are connected to the die?

submitted by /u/idontchooseanid
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