Ask Science

Have humans adopted to high / low humidity?

Me and the fiance we always fight about the A/C or dehumidifier. For me coming from central Europe, as soon as the humidity goes over 65% I’m sweaty and hot and can’t get dry, I hate it. She as a Korean seems never to sweat at all and even when the humidity is at 80% she seems to have no problems and thinks running the A/C...

At what systemic level do we start to see living beings making decisions rather than purely chemical reactions?

Starting from a molecule on up, to cells and beyond, at what system level is a being actually making a decision rather than reacting to their chemical environment based on purely chemical laws? For example, the molecules in a cells are solely reacting to their environment based on chemical fundamentals. However, a person thinks...

Does everyone learn the same gravity in school or is it different everywhere?

So, I learned in physics class at school in the UK that the value of acceleration due to gravity is a constant called g and that it was 9.81m/s^2. I knew that this value is not a true constant as it is affected by terrain and location. However I didn’t know that it can be so significantly different as to be 9.776 m/s^2 in...

Hypothetically speaking, what alterations to our biology/genome would need to occur in order for us to be able to safely drink saltwater?

Could we, in theory, use something like CRISPR to give a new baby replacement super-kidneys (or whatever organ it is that makes drinking saltwater be a bad time)? It seems like if we cracked that, we’d be set as a species....

What is the current state of research on regional anthropological phenotypes?

I know it can be a hot topic. I have long wondered what the real isolation timelines were for East Asia, India, Africa, and Europe. I’m most curious about the first two as they seem so divergent. Like a group had to be mobile enough to relocate, but then stay within a region for a (?) long time with little influx....

Is it worth closing the lid on a toilet before flushing?

This seems like something that should be true, but I think I remember seeing a Mythbusters episode where they decided it didn't make a difference. That show was more about entertainment than science, so I wondered if there was a more rigorous study done? I've definitely seen splashes of water(?) come out from flushes so that...

Did Folding@HOME or other distributed computing projects actually make a significant difference in the creation of COVID vaccines?

Like many, when I heard about Folding@HOME and how I could contribute to the fight against COVID, I put my hardware to work. Now that’s it has been a while, what effect did those projects ultimately have on the outcome? Did it actually help with the creation of vaccines, or was it effectively just a massive waste of energy?

25 years of massive fusion energy experiment data open on the 'cloud' and available to everyone ( phys.org )

High-temperature fusion plasma experiments conducted in the Large Helical Device (LHD) of the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), have renewed the world record for an acquired data amount, 0.92 terabytes (TB) per experiment, in February 2022, by using a full range of state-of-the-art plasma diagnostic devices....

Have we ever observed unique ecosystems and specific adaptations of wildlife in landfills?

Landfills have been around for a long time now, and some of them get quite large. I know seagulls are changing their habits and living off landfills, but are there any other interesting ecosystems forming around them? Maybe some new microorganisms we haven’t seen before?

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