| If we were able to walk in a straight line ignoring the curvature of the Earth, how far would we have to walk before our feet were not touching the ground? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 10:17 AM PDT EDIT: thank you for all the information. Ignoring the fact the question itself is very unscientific, there's definitely a lot to work with here. Thank you for all the help. submitted by /u/SuperMike- [link] [comments] |
| Does natural infection from coronaviruses produce neutralizing antibodies to envelope proteins and membrane proteins of the virus in addition to the spike protein? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 07:53 AM PDT |
| Why is it on hot summer nights the temperature only cools down briefly at the break of Dawn? It seems counterintuitive. Why would it get cooler just as the sun is rising? Posted: 14 Jul 2021 03:56 AM PDT |
| How is the Ecliptic plane oriented in relation to the Galactic plane? Posted: 14 Jul 2021 06:26 AM PDT Are they coplanar or the ecliptic plane is inclined in some way? and does it change over time? Thank you! submitted by /u/rockappalla [link] [comments] |
| If children who undergo hemispherectomies generally do not experience significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor, and experience only minimal changes in cognitive function overall, what's the advantage to having both hemispheres? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 06:54 PM PDT I would intuit that hemispherectomy patients would suffer significant long-term effects on memory, personality, humor, and overall cognitive function. However, that doesn't appear to be the case. With half of itself gone, the brain somehow finds a way to work around the loss and keep things running. There are obviously some drawbacks, though. I came across information on how, when the left hemisphere is resected, some advanced language functions (e.g. higher order grammar) cannot be assumed by the right side. But why aren't there more significant adverse effects (both in quantity and severity)? If we can do so well without the other hemisphere, why develop it at all? Solely for the bits that the other side can't assume? And, finally, if it's possible to do most of the work of an entire brain in one half, doesn't it stand to reason that the same rewiring could be done in a human with both hemispheres, thus leaving the other half available for something else... maybe better memory or enhanced information processing? Or am I taking this too far? Some mild references for my claims: "As long as the removal of one hemisphere of the brain is done before let's say, 7 years old, a child is just fine. I've talked with several young adults who had hemispherectomies when they were younger, and you really wouldn't know it. Except they often have a slight limp on the other side of their body from where their hemisphere was removed. But cognitively, they're just fine. What this means is that half the real estate disappears and yet the whole system figures out how to function." - David Eagleman "Overall, hemispherectomy is a successful procedure. A 1996 study of 52 individuals who underwent the surgery found that 96% of patients experienced reduced or completely ceased occurrence of seizures post-surgery. Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor, and minimal changes in cognitive function overall. For example, one case followed a patient who had completed college, attended graduate school and scored above average on intelligence tests after undergoing this procedure at age 5. This patient eventually developed "superior language and intellectual abilities" despite the removal of the left hemisphere, which contains the classical language zones." - Wikipedia (I know, I know, it's just a nice starting place!) submitted by /u/KovyM [link] [comments] |
| Would your joint 'dry up' after you have your synovium removed? Posted: 14 Jul 2021 06:05 AM PDT I've been reading about synovectomys and for the life of me I cannot find any information for post operative care. How does the joint make fluid and maintain good lubrication if there is no synovium? Are you just at a hugely increased risk for arthritis and its just about pain management? submitted by /u/volgaring [link] [comments] |
| Does the time dilation experienced by a fast moving object decrease the average velocities in it's particles such that a stationary observer would believe the object is colder than it is? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 05:49 PM PDT So my loose understanding is the faster an object moves through space, the slower it experiences time relative to an observer. In my head, that would mean that, to an outside observer, the vibrations of particles in the fast moving object would also appear to be slower. Their kinetic energies relative to one another would appear to decrease to an outside observer, no? If you could somehow directly observe the motion of those particles relative to eachother, would you conclude that the object is much colder than it really is? In other words, does the idea of temperature dilate along with space/time, or does the idea of temperature not apply in this context in that way? submitted by /u/ChrisGnam [link] [comments] |
| How does big non polar molecules enter the cell passively pass the hydrophilic phosphate heads? Posted: 14 Jul 2021 01:43 AM PDT I understand that phospholipid bilayer has a hydrophobic core which the non polar molecule can diffuse in. However how does the molecule even get pass the hydrophilic phosphate head? And why wouldnt they be just stuck inside the hydrophobic core where they can stay comfortably rather than entering the cytosol where it is a hydrophilic environment Any insights will be much appreciated thank you!! =) submitted by /u/Lifecanbesadattimes [link] [comments] |
| What caused the Late Cenozoic Ice Age? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 06:46 PM PDT The Cenozoic era began with palm trees and alligators in Montana, and in those same areas glaciers now exist. What caused this change in climate? submitted by /u/jesus-chrysocolla [link] [comments] |
| Ask Anything Wednesday - Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology Posted: 14 Jul 2021 07:00 AM PDT Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology 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! submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments] |
| What would happen if you injected someone else's immune system cells into your own body? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 05:36 PM PDT |
| Is there any data how well natural immunity prevents COVID-19? Posted: 14 Jul 2021 02:17 AM PDT Everything I read about it from the media doesn't seem clear for me. A lot of headlines like "People with natural immunity have fewer antibodies against variants". Yes, but same case happens with the vaccines and they still work quite well. And there is also t-cell response apart from antibodies present at the moment. I remember that I read that 80% with previous COVID infections who caught it again were asymptomatic. I think it was the case with autumn wave. Do we have any info about response to delta variant? submitted by /u/NoCucumber2464 [link] [comments] |
| Are we able to accurately predict planetary orbits over a longer period of time? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 12:32 PM PDT I was wondering whether planetary orbits can be predicted with our classical theories, or whether quantum randomness comes into play making the unpredictable in the long run? submitted by /u/runningshoes1 [link] [comments] |
| What Would the Pressure be Under a Column of Liquid Suspended Above an Open Body of Water? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 01:57 PM PDT The pressure under a column of liquid is easy to find using the hydrostatic equilibrium equation. The taller the column of liquid, the higher the pressure at the bottom, this makes sense. Consider that trick where a cup can be placed underwater and allowed to fill. The cup is then turned upside down and lifted most of the way out of the water while ensuring that the opening of the cup remains submerged. Rather than spill out from the cup, the water stays inside and becomes elevated above the surface of the water, forming a contiguous body of water that protrudes up. Now imagine we did this with a very large cup in a big pool. Suppose to used a 10ft tall cup to lift a bunch of water elevated above the pool, as shown in my very crude drawing here. What would the pressure distribution look like? Under the cup, I'd expect to see higher pressure than not under the cup because the height of the fluid column is taller, but it doesn't make sense for high pressure fluid and lower pressure fluid to exist right next to each other. Then, does the pressure of the entire pool increase? Consider station 1 in the drawing, right at the surface of the water, not under the cup. The pressure there must be ambient pressure because it's rights at the boundary. But just next to that region at station 2 under the cup, the pressure should be higher because of the weight of the fluid above. How then is this resolved? submitted by /u/MolugMotive [link] [comments] |
| When did medics started measuring oxygen levels? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 06:45 PM PDT My mom asked me a question I'm also curious about, she said that when I was born she doesn't remember seeing an oxymeter. She said she doesn't remember ever being sick and a doctor talking about her oxygen levels. I'm curious about it. submitted by /u/jo53_100 [link] [comments] |
| Has anything changed in the last 20 years to make the forecasting of weather more accurate? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 08:55 AM PDT So I was sitting on my deck and I was looked at my weather app at 11:30. It said that at 12:00 pm there will be a 100% chance of rain. The rain started at 11:50. Is this just a case of weather forecasts being more accurate closer to the event, or has something in the way that weather is forecast fundamentally improved? submitted by /u/UnfinishedComplete [link] [comments] |
| How does an induction furnace melt aluminium? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 09:35 AM PDT Shouldn't a material be magnetic for induction to heat it? I'm wondering why an induction stovetop cannot heat aluminium but a furnace can. submitted by /u/CorneredOpossum [link] [comments] |
| How does polarizing film work? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 11:16 AM PDT I asked this in physics but didn't receive an answer. I am sure that this is a very basic question. But I am not a physicist and haven't really found a clear answer. I was thinking about the three-polarizing film experiment and how a third film between to others could allow light through, but then realized that I didn't even fully understand what is going on with a single piece of polarizing film. Please let me know which parts of the following I am misunderstanding: If I have a horizontally polarized piece of film, it lets exactly (or nearly) half of the light through right? The way this is explained, at least wherever I can find an explanation, is that this "blocks the vertical light" and lets the horizontal through. But this way of looking at things seems to paint the picture (Call it picture A) of just two orientations of light waves. Horizontal or vertical and always perpendicular to each other. Is that how things are? If so, that is the source of my misunderstanding, because I have been thinking that the following picture (picture B) is correct. Picture B: When a light source creates a beam, the peaks and valleys of the light waves are oriented in all directions, not just two. What I mean is that if we say photon 1 has a peak that is arbitrarily called "up" then photon 2 might have one the same distance from the axis but rotated at 2 degrees, or 7 or 19, or 70. In other words, those peaks can be at any angle, not just 0 and 90 . Is picture A or picture B correct? Picture A seems strangely arbitrary as it would make it seem as if light in space has a definite orientation relative to nothing else--e.g. a kind of absolute "north", "south", "east" and "west" that the peaks always face anywhere in the universe. That would seem like far too fundamental and strange of a fact for me not to have heard it when reading science news etc. But, if picture B is correct, then here is my question: - How does a polarizing film let half of the light through? Shouldn't it only let through a very, very small fraction of light--that fraction that is exactly horizontal or exactly vertical (within whatever the tolerance of the film is)?
- I am imagining that what looks like a grayish film to me, at a magnified level, is really a bunch of opaque horizontal lines on a clear film.
Is something else going on here? Is horizontal and vertical, when used in regard to light, not being used in a literal sense (like the way "spin" is used to mean something other than literal rotation)? Thank you for your time. GP submitted by /u/TheGandPTurtle [link] [comments] |
| Can ears become insensitive to certain frequency ranges? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 10:32 AM PDT My father is getting fever (for seemingly unidentified reasons) since more than 20 days, so I bought a thermometer. Now for some very weird reasons, he is not able to hear that 'beep' sound which notifies that thermometer has completed measurement at all? He is 60 but he otherwise can hear all the sounds, in fact even lower volume sounds pretty decently. He could hear very faint voice from his phone far away while measuring fever and mistook it for beep. I told him it was not thermometer. Then, when it was actually beeping, he was literally holding it in hand and asking me me if it is beeping??! I only tried with my mother once, but she also couldn't hear it, however, she hears less on one ear so it didn't surprise me much. That leads me to the question whether this is a known phenomenon? The only plausible explanation I could think of was that beep was of constant frequency (I don't know proper term for it but 's same sound you would get if you would supply a speaker with dc signal) and his eardrums don't vibrate at that frequency perhaps due to aging. PS : I'm new and couldn't decide what would be a better flair, physics or human body. submitted by /u/mastersnorli [link] [comments] |
| Why keep small sample of baby's cord to take home? Posted: 13 Jul 2021 11:24 AM PDT I understand the potential benefit of storing cord blood for certain medical conditions. However, the hospital just provided me a small sealed envelope of cord blood to take home and keep in a cool, dry place. All my internet searches pull up information about storing whole cord blood. Is there a reason or practical purpose to this? Or is it just a weird bio keepsake? submitted by /u/Lasersmatter [link] [comments] |
| Why does water get stuck in your ears? And how does alcohol get it out? Posted: 12 Jul 2021 10:44 PM PDT |
| Why do kids have less myelination in their brains than adults? Posted: 12 Jul 2021 10:00 PM PDT My hunch is that it has to do with the explore/exploit tradeoff. Maybe non myelinated neurons are more flexible and so kids can learn (explore) more easily, whereas myelinated neurons are more efficient, enabling adults to act more efficiently (exploit) in the world. I guess another way to put it is "what is the cost of myelination?" submitted by /u/_weather_systems_ [link] [comments] |
