Recent comments in /f/todayilearned

Librosaurus t1_jdmmqbd wrote

Reply to comment by LikeWisedUp in TIL that Chinese Food was introduced into America during the California Gold Rush, starting in 1848. As 30,000 immigrants had arrived from the Canton region of China, the restaurants gave the predominantly male population a connection to home and provided gathering places for the Chinese community. by jdward01

I don't know if disinformation is a perfectly fair assessment of the milder, modern concerns around MSG (although I don't contest it being disinformation in the past)

0

KittenBraden t1_jdmmird wrote

Reply to comment by Rementoire in TIL: Thanks to poor internal communication at NASA, information about a spacesuit water leak wasn't properly communicated. Later, Astronaut Luca Parmitano almost drowned on a July, 2013 ISS space walk, his helmet filling with several liters of water before they could get him back inside. by OvidPerl

Same! And for once I remembered where a thing from a movie is! It’s from the scifi movie Life (2017), Here is the scene: https://youtu.be/LZ_O9gEq-Fs

30

Ahelex t1_jdmmeir wrote

Reply to comment by Lotharofthepotatoppl in TIL: Thanks to poor internal communication at NASA, information about a spacesuit water leak wasn't properly communicated. Later, Astronaut Luca Parmitano almost drowned on a July, 2013 ISS space walk, his helmet filling with several liters of water before they could get him back inside. by OvidPerl

I don't think anybody aspires to die from infection due to choking on their own saliva.

29

suvlub t1_jdmmae6 wrote

Reply to TIL, the placenta that forms with a fetus isn't created by the mother. It grows from the fertilized egg and some fetuses actually develop outside the uterus attached to the intestines in the body cavity. by darw1nf1sh

There is a weird evolutionary arms-race going on about the placenta. There are some genes that, via epigenic mechanisms, only activate when inherited from a parent of specific sex.

There are genes that activate when inherited from the father, and these genes make the placenta... bigger, stronger, more aggressive, more invasive, to make the baby big and strong, possibly at the expense of the mother and her future children (which may not be by the same father).

Then there are genes that activate when inherited from the mother, which do the opposite, and try to keep the placenta in check, to minimize the risk to the mother and keep the uterus in good condition for future children.

Obviously, you can't go too far in either direction. But over the span of evolution, the balance was shifting here and there, and the genes kept accumulating. Now we carry lot of useless baggage that cancels itself out in our genome.

39

DeengisKhan t1_jdmkl4y wrote

Reply to comment by SerifGrey in TIL, the placenta that forms with a fetus isn't created by the mother. It grows from the fertilized egg and some fetuses actually develop outside the uterus attached to the intestines in the body cavity. by darw1nf1sh

No humans existed that were non placental, that evolutionary trait developed many species before us, we just still make use of that method of birth in our biology because it works well enough to have kept placental mammals in the game.

17

Dragmire800 t1_jdmkdjf wrote

Reply to comment by SerifGrey in TIL, the placenta that forms with a fetus isn't created by the mother. It grows from the fertilized egg and some fetuses actually develop outside the uterus attached to the intestines in the body cavity. by darw1nf1sh

Not humans, humans always gave birth with a placenta. Millions of years ago, a mammal was infected with a virus that ended up resulting in a structure that became the placenta.

We can look at the non-placental mammals around to deduce how our non-placental ancestor would have spawned offspring. The obvious is egg laying, like almost every animal does today besides placental mammals. We see this in monotremes like the platypus. The other option is to do it like marsupials where offspring is born ridiculously underdeveloped, and spends its early life in a pouch drinking it’s mothers’ milk.

Live birth is observed in some non-mammals, like sharks. Those shark species sustain themselves by eating their siblings while still in the mother

83

Tribaal t1_jdmi2v5 wrote

Reply to comment by The_Flurr in TIL: Thanks to poor internal communication at NASA, information about a spacesuit water leak wasn't properly communicated. Later, Astronaut Luca Parmitano almost drowned on a July, 2013 ISS space walk, his helmet filling with several liters of water before they could get him back inside. by OvidPerl

Assuming it is possible for astronauts to open their EVA suits... and close them back by themselves 😋

80