Recent comments in /f/askscience

0oSlytho0 t1_j5v906w wrote

Reply to What determines whether we can create a vaccine for an illness or not? by ShelfordPrefect

One other important factor involved is not based on the severity of the disease, nor the targetability of it. It's cost related. Anything that threatens "the west" gets more attention than diseases in e.g. subsaharan Africa because there is more money to make in richer countries.

I work at a company that develops immuno therapies for (initially) late stage (insert type, I can't tell, sorry) cancer. Our antibodies could be designed against basically anything but we picked a target that's not too crowded on the market and affects enough people that we expect to earn back our research investments and make some profit to invest in new therapies.

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F_Boas t1_j5v8zxn wrote

Reply to comment by louddoves in Ask Anything Wednesday - Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology by AutoModerator

I’m an archaeologist so I’m best suited to give you a succinct definition for feminist archaeology, but it essentially is looking at the any people who were previously overlooked when examining past human behavior. Doesn’t necessarily have to be women, it can be how children appear in the record, or any other group that was typically not cared about by early archaeologists who were very focused on “Man the Hunter” and chalked everything else up to “oh and women gathered things, but have you seen these men?!?”

I think overall, both men and women did a lot of overlap on tasks. Age probably has to do more with role separation than sex. I think that the “Grandmother Hypothesis” for example could be considered feminist anthropology. It’s hard to take young children hunting, they’re loud. It’s hard for elderly people to hunt, it’s very taxing. That leaves the prime aged men and women available for that task. But meemaw and pawpaw can watch junior while mom and dad hunt. They get something protein rich, and while they’re out doing that, everyone else does some local gathering. Boom, balanced diet for the whole family. The Grandmother Hypothesis is great at explaining why humans, unlike other mammals, live far past their main reproductive years, in my opinion.

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janoc t1_j5v7tqc wrote

Reply to Why do sample return missions such as OSIRIS-REx use their own reentry vehicles instead of just going to the space station for pickup and return with ISS equipment? by PromptCritical725

In addition to what /u/electric_ionland said, there is the whole safety thing. If anything goes haywire with the complicated rendezvous and/or docking, you have just put an irreplaceable space asset and 7 people in danger - that in addition to losing whatever samples the spacecraft was returning.

Anything flying to ISS has to be specifically certified for it and the whole approach and docking process needs to be extensively tested before even the first test flight is allowed. Obviously not an option for a one-off deep space mission.

That doesn't mean that this couldn't be done sometime in the future but it is just too impractical and risky today.

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fishling t1_j5v6yas wrote

Reply to comment by PromptCritical725 in Why do sample return missions such as OSIRIS-REx use their own reentry vehicles instead of just going to the space station for pickup and return with ISS equipment? by PromptCritical725

Note that the problem is larger than they made it sound, as those are vectors as well. The sample return mission is almost certainly not going to be coming on a path aligned with the ISS orbit that only needs to slow 4 km/s to meet it.

Also, I would think that it would increase the risk to ISS, some of the return capacity is already booked, and that doing the load/transfer of samples and ensuring everything is balanced and secured appropriately for reentry is hard.

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thereisafrx t1_j5v6882 wrote

Reply to comment by Psychotic_EGG in If I had two cups of water, one normal size and one as big as a swimming pool and stirred them both with proportionally sized spoons, would the larger pool of water keep spiraling longer than the smaller? by r3volc

Not necessarily.

Lots of people have rolled stones down hills, or pushed something down the stairs, etc.

As such, a lot more people have a more intuitive concept of how solid mass interacts with the surrounding environment, but fluids are a different beast entirely so it wouldn't be something a lot of folks would have common experience with.

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radioactive_dude t1_j5v61b5 wrote

Reply to How hot is the steam coming out of nuclear power plants? by ivy-claw

It depends what you mean by coming out of the plant. In most nuclear reactor designs, the fuel is cooled by water under pressure being pumped over it. By the time the water exits the core, it is typically something over 300C and 15 MPa, but under the critical point of water at that given pressure.

This water is not used to drive the steam turbine directly. It goes through a heat exchanger to heat a secondary loop of water to create steam for the turbine. The steam needs to be condensed back to water in order to be reused. Some reactors use bodies of water, some use cooling towers. The steam coming out of cooling towers is considerably colder at less than 50C and at atmospheric pressure.

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quats5 t1_j5v4x5s wrote

Reply to comment by FelisCantabrigiensis in What determines whether we can create a vaccine for an illness or not? by ShelfordPrefect

I remember looking around about a decade ago and realizing that I hadn’t heard about chickenpox in a while.

I had a very light case when I was so young that I don’t remember it, so I’ve always known my immunity is likely negligible and that I need to be wary and stay clear of people who have it. It’s much more dangerous in adults.

….and then I realized I hadn’t had a mental alert of caution! Caution! Chickenpox! in… years.

So I Google and… oh. They made a vaccine for it in the 90’s, and it’s standard now. And practically nobody gets chickenpox any more because of this.

Nice.

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