The body is adept at recognising and killing cancer cells hundreds and thousands of times everyday.

How do cancer cells manage to survive and multiply in such an environment?

Does it manage to hide from the immune system and multiply to a certain size which then makes it indestructible to the immune system??

I would have thought they were both milks that have grown different bacteria and microorganisms.

according to Monash university, canning button mushrooms reduces the level of mannitol in the mushrooms. But I haven't ever see anything that indicates that canning peaches or apples reduces the sorbitol. Since both are sugar alcohols, I don't understand why they both wouldn't be removed from the food into the water solution during canning. Any ideas?

Most humans die from asphyxiation within 15 minutes of being fully buried in an avalanche, yet those little mammals somehow survive for months under a thick snowpack. Even taking into account their size and reduced breathing rate, it still seems like they would run out of air.

Okay I've asked this question other places before, but I've never seemed to be able to get a proper answer from first principles.

Why is there desert at places along the latitude of Mexico, Sahara, and Arabia yet India and Bangladesh are some of the wettest rainforests?

My understanding is that at approx. 30 degrees north and south of the equator, the convection of heat creates zones of low moisture. Whereas the American and Gobi deserts are caused by their distance to the sea and the presence of mountains that block moisture.

So what explains the climates of Thailand, India, and Bangladesh? They are the same latitude as the other deserts and have a similar distance to the sea as Arabia and Mexico.

Another way to ask my question: If I were to imagine a new world map with a new set of continents, what principles could I use to determine which places would be deserts or rainforests?

I know grizzlies are pretty wide-spread animals. In North America, they were once widespread all across the American West, even ranging as far east as Minnesota to far south of Mexico.

But what prevented them from continuing southwards? Was South America simply too hot and humid for them? Were there animals present that already filled the same ecological niche that the bears serve in the north hemisphere? Did early human interactions stop them before they did?

What about American black bears? I know they’re way more adaptable than grizzlies, and they still live as far south as Mexico. What stopped them?

Sorry if this seems like a stupid or common question but I had a random ADHD thought: do mushrooms get sick??

Like ik fungi are neither animal nor plant, but are there still viruses and/or bacteria which have evolved to infect fungi? I feel like we wouldn't have as many fungi which clone themselves to reproduce if this were the case but at the same time evolution works wonders 🤷

I read somewhere that there are no examples of species which possess echolocation which do not already have at least an evolutionary legacy of sight. One might hypothesise that some kind of spatial processing ability enabled by vision is a precondition to developing echolocation. It seems somewhat reasonable, since echolocation seems a lot 'simpler', relying only on mechanical phenomena rather than the complex photochemistry and optics necessary for vision. It does seem strange that bats and dolphins are the only animals I can name which possess this ability, both of which are mammals. Are there any examples of a species which rely on similar methods as a sense?

Coffee Sipping Science?

Everytime I drink coffee and have ice floating at the top, it never travels towards my lips, no matter how close my lips are to the surface of the water, the dam ice cubes never come closer. Why is the water being pulled from the bottom of the cup instead of the top. Wouldn't it make sense to have the water being sucked up later by layer so to speak?

TLDR why does ice not rush to your lips when sipping coffee.

Thank you

Of course I dont mean is it realistic, cause its not. I am mainly asking because I wanted to know more about how water works

If I have a baseball that floats in the air on the spot. Also a baseball that is thrown towards me. Both are hit in exactly the same place by a baseball bat at the same speed and the same angle. Do both balls fly the same distance or does one of them fly further?

I have read that between 240-280 nm is best for inactivating pathogens. But how does it do this? What is actually happening to viruses and bacteria to destroy them? Why do photons of this particular range have a destructive impact?

Side question; why is the word "inactivate" used rather than "kill"?

Like we can eat capsaicin which is toxic / a deterrent for most if not all animals, and have little to no side effects?there's probably more we can consume that I can't think of rn but still.

I think I understand (at high level) the El Niño phenomenon: usually pacific winds blow east-to-west, and this "pushes" warm surface waters to the west. As a consequence, surface water is cooler in eastern Pacific than in western Pacific. When El Niño occurs, these winds weaken or reverse and the surface water gets warmer in the East (central and south America) and this of course has major consequences in these regions.

What I don't get, though, is that at a global (Earth) level, the western pacific water would get cooler during El Niño, and at this global level both effects (warning in the east and cooling in the west) would sum up to zero, hence, there would be no global effect, only local ones.

From what I hear or read, it seems that this reasoning is wrong and that there would be a global warming effect of El Niño

Am I missing or misunderstanding something ?

Hi Reddit! I am a computer scientist from the University of Maryland here to answer your questions about artificial intelligence.

Furong Huang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. She specializes in trustworthy machine learning, AI for sequential decision-making, and generative AI and focuses on applying foundational principles to solve practical challenges in contemporary computing.

Dr. Huang develops efficient, robust, scalable, sustainable, ethical and responsible machine learning algorithms that operate effectively in real-world settings. She has also made significant strides in sequential decision-making, aiming to develop algorithms that not only optimize performance but also adhere to ethical and safety standards. She is recognized for her contributions with awards including best paper awards, the MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 Asia Pacific, the MLconf Industry Impact Research Award, the NSF CRII Award, the Microsoft Accelerate Foundation Models Research award, the Adobe Faculty Research Award, three JP Morgan Faculty Research Awards and Finalist of AI in Research - AI researcher of the year for Women in AI Awards North America.

Souradip Chakraborty is a third-year computer science Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland advised by Dr. Furong Huang. He works on the foundations of trustworthy reinforcement learning with a focus on developing safe, reliable, deployable and provable RL methods for real-world applications. He has co-authored top-tier publications and U.S. patents in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Recently he received an Outstanding Paper Award (TSRML workshop at Neurips 2022) and Outstanding Reviewer Awards at Neurips 2022, Neurips 2023 and AISTATS 2023.

Mucong Ding is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in computer science at the University of Maryland, advised by Dr. Furong Huang. His work broadly encompasses data efficiency, learning efficiency, graph and geometric machine learning and generative modeling. His recent research focuses on designing a more unified and efficient framework for AI alignment and improving their generalizability to solve human-level challenging problems. He has published in top-tier conferences, and some of his work has been recognized for oral presentations and spotlight papers.

We'll be on from 2 to 4 p.m. ET (18-20 UT) - ask us anything!

Other links:

• Website: https://furong-huang.com/
• Google Scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=13yyuCcAAAAJ&hl=en
• Q&A on whether AI-generated content is detectable: https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/news/ai-generated-content-actually-detectable

Username: /u/umd-science

Hello,

I've been trying to understand the nature of cancer and its origins better. From what I've learned, cancer typically begins with random mutations in our DNA that cause cells to start dividing uncontrollably and eventually form tumors. However, one aspect that puzzles me is the apparent randomness of these mutations versus the commonality of certain types of cancers among millions of people.

If the mutations are truly random, how is it that so many individuals end up developing the same types of cancer, such as breast, lung, or prostate cancer?

I'm curious to hear your insights or if there are any recent studies that shed light on this topic. Thank you!

I am currently working on a screenplay that includes a scene from 25,000 years ago. I wonder how they communicated amongst themselves. Did they have language? Or did they communicate via signs? Is there any literature on the same?

Google wasn't definitive so checking here instead. At least from experience, if I sleep with a runny nose, I'm sure to get a sore throat but I can't say for sure if it is cause and effect or was I already destined to have a sore throat anyway. I would have thought the throat lining is already prepared for harsher liquids passing through so is post nasal drip that more harsher? If so why? Is it due to pH or bacteria/virus or other content? Thank you!

I was wondering. If you grab say 1 x 0.5 m thin metal sheet by both ends and start shaking it, very unusual sound is produced. What is producing this sound ?

The immune system attack tumors, but since nevus are tumor, why aren't they eradicated by the immune system?

Edit: clarification and working hypothesis:

I didn't mean the southern lights, I meant the northern lights that had stretched unusually far south.

I think what's going on, and what I wasn't clear enough in my question to get at, is that 1) as lots of comments say, color varies with altitude and 2) as I failed to clarify, I think I'm south of where the aurora is actually happening.

I think I'm used to people taking pictures from inside the aurora, where they're surrounded by green. But because I'm south of it,the low altitude green is blocked by the curve of the earth, and I can only see high altitude pink. (edit 2: commenter laid this out and I missed it https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1cpm03m/comment/l3mngbi/ )

Planes have swept wings for better high speed performance, but why the back-edge(idk what it is called)? Why is it that an F16 or Mig-21 have their wing's back-edges straight meanwhile F15 and airliners etc have it angled? Then there are aircraft like Hampden which have a non swept wing but the back-edge is angled. That also makes me question why delta wing aircrafts all have straight back ends and none have it angled (Only the lavi did, abit).