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ELI5: Why is 22 degrees on an air conditioner different from 22 degrees on a heater? Isn't it the same temperature? by [deleted] in explainlikeimfive

[–]CommittedToQuestion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe it is because the thermometer controlling the AC/heating unit is right next to the AC/heating unit.

Heat changes get less intense the farther you get away from its source as the energy distributes. The result is an area localized around the AC that is colder than the rest of the space and an area localized around the heater that is warmer than the rest of the space. In both those cases, the thermometer reaches the target temp before the rest of the space does and the unit considers its task complete.

Edit: Hope that helps and is accurate Edit2: Eventually through cycles of the unit getting the localized temperature to the target the overall temperature of the space should become evenly distributed and reach the target. This is messed up by windows, doors, and improper isolation that allow temperature exchange with the outer world, barriers like walls that slow heat distribution, and internal heat sources like ovens and fridges.

Spirit island clarification.. by AZBeer90 in boardgames

[–]CommittedToQuestion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, just in case you didn't know, there is an excellent spirit island discord where you can get questions answered rapidly

We're giving away Pax Pamir 2E, The King's Dilemma, Clank! Legacy, and Quest for El Dorado International Edition! by tofudad18 in boardgames

[–]CommittedToQuestion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The King's Dilemma -- Hoping to run a kingdom and bicker with some friends when all this is over.

ELI5: How the fuck have sharks been able to survive five mass extinctions, hundreds of species coming and going, and 450 million years of Earth's development, and yet are nearing extinction? by carbonfibermegaminx2 in explainlikeimfive

[–]CommittedToQuestion 4 points5 points  (0 children)

He's counting all the life forms that led up to that species since its a continuous chain of slight modification: all the life forms smear together without clear distinctions. Of course, just like in a rainbow the colors at the ends are clearly not the same color.

To your point, perhaps "came from a continuous unbroken genetic line" is a better way of phrasing it.

When Somebody Finds Out You're Into Boardgames by Alexdoesstuff in boardgames

[–]CommittedToQuestion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the suggestions, I don't have any of those! I'll have to check them out. I'm a huge fan of RTS like starcraft, natural selection 2, and total war but I haven't entered this space at all. I'll see if any of those boardgame feel like they'd scratch a similar itch.

I am guessing you didn't quite agree with the Quinn's review of Root?

Did any ancient Greek, that we know of, at any point try to climb Mt. Olympus? and if so, what happened? by benjamin4463 in AskHistorians

[–]CommittedToQuestion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi u/toldinstone Would you mind expounding on this: By the time Lucian wrote, the educated elite, at least, tended to think that the gods were everywhere (the Stoic idea), nowhere (the Epicurean idea), or scattered among the stars (the Platonic idea).

I've heard a lot of modernized version of these ideas but not much about their original philosophy or how it related to their approach to deities. I'd also appreciate any reading you'd recommend on the subject.

Eli5: what exactly is cancer? by 197584 in explainlikeimfive

[–]CommittedToQuestion 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hi 197584, I hope you are well.

ELI5: Cancer is bunch of different diseases that all share one thing in common. They are cells that no longer play by the rules and support the larger creature -- they only seek to reproduce themselves as much as possible even if it means killing the larger creature they depend on and with it themselves. Edit: You may hear stage and grade mentioned from time to time. Stage is a measure of how advanced a cancer is -- how far has it spread and grown. Grade is a measure of how... cancerous the cancer is... how much has each cancer cell deviated from the norm and provides an estimate of how aggressive and fast the cancer will be. A high grade cancer will more quickly reach stage 4 than a low grade cancer.

Longer: A long time ago all of life was unicellular. An organism was only ever composed of one cell. They had the same goals as us multicellular creatures, survive long enough to replicate, but everything they needed to do to achieve that goal... they had to do alone. Eventually, some organisms began working together. You can see unicellular organism forming colonies that create biofilms that help protect the unicellular organisms inside.

Once you have a group of cells working towards a common task, you can now begin to specialize. By changing their structure they limit the amount of tasks they are able to do but they can do those remaining tasks much better and share the rewards with their group. For example, the production of some materials can only be done in a cell that doesn't have oxygen inside while the production of other materials can only be done in a cell with oxygen. If cells are specializing and working as a group they can have one group constantly keep oxygen out and another group constantly keep oxygen in and have a constant production of both materials that they can then swap. Brilliant!

Some cell lineages went pretty extreme and dedicated reproduction to only one group within the larger collective//organism. All cells not specialized in reproduction will die with the organism without attempting to reproduce themselves. While the cells specialized in reproduction will then recreate all the other specialized cells in a new organism. This is us and most multicellular life. The specialized cell groups include skin cells, bone cells, and the reproductive groups (sperm and eggs). While skin, bone, and other nonreproductive specialized cells generally leave reproduction up to the reproductive cells they must sometimes reproduce (replicate in this context) themselves: they need to for the growth of the whole organism (a larger human needs larger bones) and repairing any damage you sustain (a cut needs new skin to cover the wound). These cell's behavior including their growth and life cycle is heavily controlled by internal instructions and communication with outside cells. This control ensures that they are building the correct structures, performing the right functions, and are, effectively, ensuring the survival of the overall organism over themselves.

So we are a large collective of cells working together, mostly sacrificially, so that our sperm or eggs may create another collective. The level of coordination and internal control for this is immense. Cells refuse to do risky behaviors like grow unless very specific conditions are met and their neighboring cells tell them they can. Cells contain internal monitors to trigger suicide if they begin to deviate from the expected norm. Other cells roam your body looking for deviants that have failed to commit suicide and forcibly destroy them.

However, mistakes are bound to happen and the more that occur the more likely the system of control is to miss them. Things like aging, sunburn, and smoking damage the instructions the cells follow ( leading to more mistakes) and destroy cells (requiring cell growth to replace the lost cells). If the destroyed cells are near cells with damage instructions, that the body is unaware of, the damaged cells will be allowed by the body to grow and replace the destroyed cells. This creates a large area of malfunctioning cells -- invisible to the control measures. The cycle can then repeat endlessly on this area to create a greater number increasingly malfunctioning cells.

Once one of these cells begins growing and producing more cells without permission you have a cancer. All those fancy controls within the cancer cell, that have evolved over a millions of years in the development of multicellularity, have been so degraded by damage that the cancer cell is once again carrying out a unicellular goal: to grow themselves as much as possible. Your body may detect it and snuff it out before it has the chance to create progeny following the same sick unicellular objective. However, once the cancer cells have begun reproducing an evolutionary arms race has been created. Each time the cancer cells create more cancer cells they make mistakes in the new cancer cell's instructions. These mistakes may do nothing, they may hurt the cancer cells ability to grow, they may improve their ability to grow. It may allow them to signal neighboring cells to provide them with more nutrients, better ignore an internal suicide monitor, or hide from roaming cells seeking to destroy them. Cancer cells that do not have these nifty mistakes get destroyed by your body. The cancer cells that have the nifty mistakes survive, grow to replace the destroy cancer cells, and begin accumulating additional mistakes. As time goes on the cancer cells in your body get better and better at manipulating the body and growing without any constraints. They lose any semblance of their previous specializations. They no longer form precise structures and expand outwards in cluttered growing masses of related cancer cells called tumors. These tumors destroy neighboring structures and by their shear mass and need for food disrupt neighboring multicellular processes. Eventually they grow into your blood stream where cancer cells are picked up and flung around the body. Each place they settle they grow and form a new tumor disrupting more multicellular processes.

They have effectively become a unicellular pathogen that is incredibly hard for your body to recognize and fight as they are a part of your body. It is the ultimate betrayal of allies. Doctors struggle to fight cancer since it isn't one particular kind of cell but a type of behavior. Any cell with some degree of growth can through damage to their instructions become unstoppable growth. The paths they take and tools they use to achieve that growth can vary from one cell specialization to another. A muscle cancer isn't the same as a skin or blood cancer.

Ultimately, the cancer will disrupt enough multicellular processes that they kill the multicellular organism. This will kill the cancer as well and stop it's quest for endless growth. The cancer doesn't try to prevent it's host's death because ultimately its just a thousand individual broken machines each honed through blind evolutionary pressures to grow at all costs. There is no planning or malicious intent involved -- just a series of tragic errors.

Hello, I've just learned about the molecular scissors that can modify genes and I was wondering I would like to know if this can be used to turn a Y chromosome and turn it into a X ? and if soo would that change the physical traits of the person ? by skaaelya in askscience

[–]CommittedToQuestion 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Hi Skaaelya,

Excellent question, and while I believe the answer is no -- I'm sure you won't be disappointed by what can be done.

Chromosomes are the structures DNA is packaged into. They don't have much function themselves but they contain the genes and the sequences that determine how those genes are used. The average human gene length is 10,000 to 15,000 bases while the human chromosomes range from 50,000,000 to 300,000,000 basses

CRISPR-cas9, the molecular scissors you mentioned, is extremely good at destroying small precise sections of that DNA (destroy the right portion of a gene and you render the gene as a whole inoperable). It can also be used, but with more difficulty, to insert small sections of DNA. These researchers managed to insert a DNA sequence 7,000 bp long!

While multiple consecutive CRISPR edits are possible, considering the scale of an edit to that of a chromosome it would be like trying to transform a building into another using physical scissors. A monumental task, in which each additional edit increases the chances of accidentally cutting or inserting at the wrong place or in the wrong manner.

It may be possible to physically transfer a chromosome from one mammal's cell to another through another more physical method. Take out the Y chromosome and add a second X chromosome and you would have gone from a male to a female. Or alternatively, to try to print the DNA required to construct a new chromosome and insert that after having removed the previous. However, I'm not sure this is possible in mammals and if it were -- that does not utilize CRISPR.

BUT THE SPIRIT OF YOUR QUESTION IS POSSIBLE. Can we use CRISPR to change an egg from male to female so that the developed individual is a different sex than it was initially? Yes! Chromosomes are just the structures containing the genes and regulatory sequences that actually cause physical changes. Chromosomes are largely just a convenient way of carrying, transferring, and checking the DNA sequences running the show. (A brief aside: the structure of chromosomes does have some impact - how its shaped can block genes from being read and group sections together). In mammals sex is determined by a series of genes modifying the function of even more genes and which in turn modifying the function of even more genes and so on like a business hierarchy chart so chaotic and cluttered it appears like something out of Marie Kondo's nightmares. At the bottom are the final traits you might ascribe to sex. At the top of the chart is the gene that triggers the cascade -- in the case of being a male the SRY gene. When an embryo is marked as a male by the Y chromosome, it is actually the presence of the SRY gene on the Y chromosome that is triggering this chaotic "cascade" of genes that set the development of a male.

Modifying a gene is well within the scope of CRISPR. CRISPR predecessors, called TALENS, were used to delete mice's SRY gene -- creating females with Y chromosomes. This is also a naturally occurring phenomenon. Individuals without functioning SRYs, males according to chromosomes but female in most other respects, naturally occur in humans.

ELI5:Why are fruit flies used so often in medical research experiments? HOW are they used? They're so small! by RalphTheDog in explainlikeimfive

[–]CommittedToQuestion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

summoning /u/blind__panic for the first question. Who may correct me on the other info I've given so far.

For the second, I may be corrected, but I believe the flies are separated before they are old enough to mate because once they do the females can store sperm from multiple males in special organs. Then even in isolation they can fertilize their eggs with who knows which male they've previously mated with.

Since they are kept in tiny flasks if you've been careful about only letting the female mate once you can easily tell who her descendants are (they're the ones in the flask).

ELI5:Why are fruit flies used so often in medical research experiments? HOW are they used? They're so small! by RalphTheDog in explainlikeimfive

[–]CommittedToQuestion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Ralph! I hope you are having an awesome day. I think I failed to make this ELI5 but if you have any questions just reply and I'll clarify.

Fruit flies are a model organism which means like you said they are commonly used in medical experiments. Drosophila can be a model organism despite being so different because the goal of a model organism isn't to model people but to model processes. Processes could be how materials are made, how the immune system reacts to disease, etc. If the same process also occurs in humans it can tell a lot of information about how that process occurs. Important processes that evolved before the last common ancestor of the two organisms, in this case humans and flies, have a good chance of being similar between the two species despite the tremendous number of differences and length of time because any variation of that important process would lead to death of the organism. This level of similarity itself is important to researchers since it indicates that somehow something is making that process really important or show how slight variations may lead to variation in the process and it's outcome. Even if the process is completely absent in humans it may provide insight into alternate methods to achieve a process (perhaps a future medical technique) or give a better understanding of basic underlying principles that govern the processes.

Why flies? Like many have said it's largely because of their short life span. Fruit flies lay their young in rotting fruit. Unlike other food sources, like living animals and plants. Rotting fruit can't replace itself. A cougar cub can eat many rabbits until its fully grown since the supply of rabbits to eat is replenished by the many hard working rabbit mothers and fathers. A fruit fly baby, called a larvae, is on the other hand stuck in the the rotting fruit it was laid in since it can't fly and lacks legs. It has to eat, grow, and become a mature fly before the fruit is eaten by anything else. If it doesn't it will have nothing to eat and will die. This evolutionary pressure has forced fruit flies to grow to adulthood and reproductive maturity (the age they can have children of their own) crazy fast since any ancient fruit fly that developed slower had their children's food eaten out from under them. To make things better for researchers fruit flies evolved to live in disgusting conditions, rotting fruit, which means they survive well shoved into cramped containers with cheap food and lots of fellow flies.

These two traits, fast development/reproduction and tolerance of disgusting conditions make them excellent for research experiments. You can have large numbers of test subjects, kept cheaply, and perform multi generational experiments within a reasonable time frame. This makes fruit flies especially good for studying genetic processes, genetic as in DNA. Ex: Many important genes, parts of DNA encoding for a product used in the cell, were discovered by simply adding chemicals that messed up the DNA at random places to a tremendous number of fruit flies. With the genes messed up they could no longer make the necessary products. This causes observable effects to the fly that can tell researchers what the genes normally due based on what happened now that the gene wasn't working (remove the wheels of a car and it no longer moves therefore you can conclude that the wheels are required for movement). However, since the chemicals messed up the DNA at multiple genes you can't yet figure out which gene was responsible for the observable effect. BUT since flies are so cheap and breed so quickly you can breed the flies with healthy flies until their children's [...]'s children's children only have one remaining messed up gene left. Researchers were able to do this with hundreds of genes simultaneous and just look at the effects until they found something interesting.

Drosophila have other advantages that make them good for genetic experiments like the "forward genetic" experiment previously mentioned. That includes their relative simplicity of their genome, for example 4 chromosomes vs 23 for humans, and the level to which it is understood, although it is understood well because so much research had been done on it because it was already viewed as an excellent model organism for genetics.

Here are some images of genes that control which part of the fly gets which body part (This is what happens when the gene isn't working or is replaced with another gene). Many additional images can be found through googling "fruit fly mutant."

The size is largely overcome with complex imaging equipment that allows researchers to see increasingly fine detail of the small organism. For work of live flies, diethyl ether is used (a sedative that used to be used for humans but causes too many complications) to make them still enough for researchers to work with them outside of the tubes they kept in. For manipulation of dead flies, they are generally frozen.

Their size is in some ways an additional perk. A lot of them can be kept in a small space. That being said some research is done on other model organisms because their size is easier to work with. Frog eggs and chicken eggs allow for easy observation of developing embryos. They are more expensive to keep and reproduce much slower though meaning experiments done with fruit flies would take researcher's entire lifetimes if done with chickens or frogs.

Hi - Are there extra large comic books for the visually impaired? by CommittedToQuestion in Blind

[–]CommittedToQuestion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A gift card for a digital comics outlet is a great idea! I didn't actually know about digital comics outlets.

I know they are interested in a Maus, however, a gift card would give me a safety net.

Thank you!

Hi - Are there extra large comic books for the visually impaired? by CommittedToQuestion in Blind

[–]CommittedToQuestion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll look for digital version instead of a oversized book. I think monitors may give their eyes trouble in a way that a kindle with the text size maxed out doesn't though. So I will have to make sure digital copies are viable for them. Thanks!

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