How do lawyers get paid when a company files for bankruptcy?

how do lawyers get paid when a company files for bankruptcy

Under the Federal bankruptcy code, administrative costs of running a bankruptcy are given priority over debt owed to creditors. Therefore, both the counsel for the debtors and the official committees representing the creditors are ensured payment because technically they constitute an administrative expense of running the case. A lawyer cannot represent a bankrupt entity. So, … Read more

How do crocodiles clean their teeth and Do crocodiles grow new teeth?

how do crocodiles clean their teeth and do crocodiles grow new teeth

The Egyptian Plover (Pluvianus aegyptius) has long been called the crocodile bird for its symbiotic relationship to this most ferocious of reptiles. Sitting coolly in the gaping mouth of a basking crocodile, the bird picks leeches, flukes and tsetse flies from the animal’s gums to eat. In nearly all other circumstances the crocodile is an … Read more

How does Bleach get clothes white and How does Clorox work?

how does bleach get clothes white and how does clorox work scaled

Most laundry bleaches, including the household wizard Clorox bleach, are oxidizing agents. In the washing machine they release free-roving molecules of sodium hypochlorite or peroxide. The color of a stain or spot is made up of a group of atoms and molecules linked together by a pattern of double and single bonds. The oxidizing agent … Read more

Where does Wind Shear come from and How do pilots and airports detect wind shear?

where does wind shear come from and how do pilots and airports detect wind shear

Unless you spend a lot of time flying airplanes, you probably haven’t given a great deal of thought to the subject of wind shear. Wind shear is the phenomenon of radically differing wind velocity and direction at slightly different altitudes. The occurrence of an adjoining northerly twelve-knot wind, say, and a southerly twenty-knot wind would … Read more

Why does the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture get mentioned on cereal boxes?

why does the pennsylvania department of agriculture get mentioned on cereal boxes scaled

If you’ve ever found yourself alone at the breakfast table without a newspaper, you’ve probably resorted to reading the cereal box for diversion. There, along the side of the box, buried deep within the fine print, lies the cryptic notation, “Reg. Penna. Dept. of Agri.” What, you may have wondered, does the Pennsylvania Department of … Read more

How do paleontologists know what a particular species of dinosaur ate during the Mesozoic era?

how do paleontologists know what a particular species of dinosaur ate during the mesozoic era

We grow up absorbing explicit illustrations from picture books of sauropods nibbling leaves and tyrannosaurs ripping flesh, and yet some paleontologists maintain that these images are largely conjecture. We can speculate about what the dinosaurs ate, but in fact no one knows for sure, just as we can only imagine what color the dinosaurs were … Read more

How does the USDA measure and calculate the calories in food?

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Energy is trapped in the molecular bonds inside food, and used by the body for all sorts of physical activities: shopping, studying, jogging, reading this book. A calorie is a way to measure that energy, both as it is supplied, and as it is burned. Energy is discussed in terms of heat. One calorie, the … Read more

Who invented High Definition Television and Where did HDTV come from?

who invented high definition television and where did hdtv come from

High-definition television, the experts tell us, will deliver pictures up to five times sharper than the current standard, with a larger field of vision and with sound comparable to that produced by a compact disk. The new system, which should be commercially available by the mid-1990s, will mark the first real change in television since … Read more

How does the SEC know when someone is doing inside stock trading?

how does the sec know when someone is doing inside stock trading

Inside trading, the illicit profiteering by brokers on stock sales based on advance information about companies, is illegal because it gives the guilty trader an unfair advantage over his competitors; it can also lead to a fiscally damaging betrayal of trust. A lawyer, for instance, retained by Huge Company to assist in its secret buyout … Read more

How do editors make fake photos on Magazine Covers with computers?

how do editors make fake photos on magazine covers with computers

IF you have ever read Spy magazine you are probably familiar with doctored magazine cover photos. The satiric New York monthly once ran, for instance, a cover that included a picture of Henry Kissinger wantonly dancing the hula. It was not really a picture of Dr. Kissinger. Rather, it was a picture of Dr. Kissinger’s … Read more

How do scientists measure the thickness of the ozone layer in the atmosphere?

how do scientists measure the thickness of the ozone layer in the atmosphere

Concern about the depletion of atmospheric ozone really took off in the mid-eighties when scientists of the British Antarctic Survey first detected an ozone “hole” over their research station on Halley Bay. They found that the springtime quantity of ozone over Antarctica had decreased by more than 40 percent between 1977 and 1984. The “hole,” … Read more

How do Editors decide what goes on the cover of People Magazine?

how do editors decide what goes on the cover of people magazine

There’s an old formula at People magazine called the Law of Covers: “Young is better than old,” it goes. “Pretty is better than ugly. Rich is better than poor. TV is better than music. Music is better than movies. Movies is better than sports. And anything is better than politics.” The Law was conceived by … Read more

When was the Condom invented and How do they make sure Condoms won’t break?

when was the condom invented and how do they make sure condoms wont break

A romantic interlude isn’t the only time people worry about condoms breaking. Manufacturers worry about it all the time. So they put the condoms through elaborate tests to make sure they’re leakproof and strong. The key ingredient in the success of the multimillion-dollar modern condom industry, Americans buy some 420 million of them a year, … Read more

Who invented Neapolitan Ice Cream and How is Neapolitan Ice Cream made?

who invented neapolitan ice cream and how is neapolitan ice cream made

Despite what certain nostalgia-happy entrepreneurs would have you believe, ice cream production is a big, industrial business. The United States produces more than 900 million gallons of ice cream every year. During the first half of this century ice cream tycoons opened vast plants where noisy stainless steel machines replaced the old hand-cranked wooden ice … Read more

How is Decaffeinated Coffee made and How do they get the Caffeine out of Coffee?

how is decaffeinated coffee made and how do they get the caffeine out of coffee

The bitter, white substance caffeine makes up only about one percent of the composition of coffee beans. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires 97 percent of that tiny amount to be removed before the label may say “decaffeinated,” and some manufacturers do even better than that. The difficult part of the decaffeination process, as … Read more

Who invented Scratch and Sniff ads and How do they put the smell into scratch and sniff advertising?

who invented scratch and sniff ads and how do they put the smell into scratch and sniff advertising

In yet another clever ploy to attract customers, Madison Avenue invented the scratch-and-sniff ad. Used mostly by the cosmetics industry to sell perfumes and colognes, the ads are inserted into magazines, so you can get an idea of what the product smells like before buying it. Scratch-and-sniff strips are composed of globules of oil-based scent … Read more

How does the Poughkeepsie water treatment plant make the Hudson River water drinkable?

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Surprisingly, the first impurity to consider in the Hudson is salt, which is easier to avoid altogether than to remove. That’s why the five communities in New York State that draw drinking water regularly from the river, Waterford, Highland Falls, Port Ewen, Rhinebeck, and Poughkeepsie, are all located north of the “salt front,” which floats … Read more

How does Sunscreen block out Ultraviolet Rays from the sun?

how does sunscreen block out ultraviolet rays from the sun

Sunscreens are classified as drugs and as such are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Manufacturers use FDA-approved chemicals, oxybenzone, padimate-O, octylpmethoxy-cinnamate, and others, in different amounts and combinations, each arriving at its own unique and well-guarded formula. What these chemicals do is absorb or reflect radiation in the ultraviolet spectrum; older products … Read more

How does the Admissions Committee determine who gets into Harvard University?

how does the admissions committee determine who gets into harvard university

More than 14,000 hopeful students apply for admission to Harvard each year, competing to fill out a freshman class of about 1,600. In an average year, roughly 15 percent of the applicants will be accepted; about 75 percent of successful applicants matriculate. The basic admissions requirements include graduation from secondary school, and completion of the … Read more

How Do Emotions Affect the Color of a Chameleon?

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Their lips can turn yellow. Their strange little bodies fade from shoe-leather brown to grass green. The acclaimed herpetologist Angus Bellairs even reported in his 1970 two-volume work, The Life of Reptiles, that “if an object of distinctive shape is held against the flank of a Chameleon for a couple of minutes, its outline will … Read more

Where do Hershey’s Kisses come from and How are Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses made?

where do hersheys kisses come from and how are hersheys chocolate kisses made

When Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses were introduced in 1907, just four years after Milton S. Hershey built his first chocolate factory, the bite-size candies were wrapped individually by hand. In 1921 the chocolate makers added the Kiss’s identification plume, the little paper streamer printed “Hershey’s Kisses” that sprouts from the top of the foil wrapping. The … Read more

How do programmers teach a computer to recognize your voice?

how do programmers teach a computer to recognize your voice

It won’t be long before you can carry on lengthy conversations with a computer, schedule business appointments by negotiating with a machine rather than a secretary, even instruct your VCR by voice when to record a certain show. IBM already has a computer in the works that can recognize twenty thousand words. How does it … Read more

How does the United Nations interview and hire simultaneous interpreters for translations?

how does the united nations interview and hire simultaneous interpreters for translations

The United Nations employs 142 simultaneous interpreters, whose job it is to orally translate speeches at the very moment they are being delivered. A simultaneous interpreter listens to words spoken in one language and instantly relates in another language what is being said. Unlike translating a written document from one language to another, simultaneous interpretation … Read more

Where does Crack Cocaine come from and How do Drug Lords make crack?

where does crack cocaine come from and how do drug lords make crack

To make crack, which is cocaine in a purified, hardened form, it is first necessary to make cocaine. The process begins in the Andes of South America, with the native coca shrub. Incidentally, coca is a different plant entirely from the cacao tree, from which we get cocoa. Coca leaves contain minute amounts of the … Read more

How does the Continental Baking Company make Hostess Twinkles stay fresh for years?

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Perhaps you’ve heard, health nuts remark that Twinkies, the ultimate junk food, are so loaded with chemicals they can sit on the shelf for twenty years and the consumer wouldn’t know the difference. Not so. “That’s a popular misconception we’re not too happy about,” says Patrick Farrell of Continental Baking Company, producers of the familiar … Read more

How do Dairy Producers make long life ultra-high-temperature milk?

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Most of us wouldn’t consider drinking milk that has sat on the supermarket shelf unrefrigerated for some three months. Then again, many people, especially those without small children, have never heard of ultra-high-temperature (UHT) milk. Farm Best milk, made by Dairymen in Savannah, Georgia, is one of a number of long-shelf-life milks now available. You’ll … Read more

How does the Pulitzer Prize Board pick Pulitzer Prize winners every year?

how does the pulitzer prize board pick pulitzer prize winners every year

Pulitzer prizes are awarded annually for distinguished work in twenty-two categories of journalism, arts and letters, and music. The fourteen prizes in journalism are meritorious public service, spot news reporting, beat reporting, national reporting, international reporting, investigative reporting, explanatory journalism, editorials, editorial cartoons, spot news photography, feature photography, commentary, criticism, and feature writing. The six … Read more

How does the Census Bureau measure the unemployment rate in the United States?

how does the census bureau measure the unemployment rate in the united states

Every month, the Census Bureau surveys 59,500 American households, asking members about their current work habits. Once the data is in, the census takers ship it over to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, where analysts weigh the figures to project the national rate of unemployment. To arrive at an unemployment figure, labor statisticians first determine … Read more

How does the Federal Government decide who or what gets honored on U.S. postage stamps?

how does the federal government decide who or what gets honored on u s postage stamps

Making stamps is a function of the federal government, and as is the case with most governmental projects, a committee has been appointed to get the job done. The fourteen members of the Citizens’ Advisory Stamp Committee, representing expertise in American art, business, history, and technology, and sharing an interest in philately, are handpicked by … Read more

How do Emperor Penguins stay warm in Antarctica when it’s so cold?

how do emperor penguins stay warm in antarctica when its so cold

The emperor penguin, which happily swims and romps in killing temperatures of minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, is the only bird that can, and often does, spend its entire life on coastal or shelf ice, without ever coming ashore. Basically, three mechanisms are at work in safeguarding the emperor penguin’s body heat: its feather construction, its … Read more

How do Chinese physicians treat drug addiction with Acupuncture Detoxification?

how do chinese physicians treat drug addiction with acupuncture detoxification

In treating drug addiction, acupuncture is used to suppress the addict’s physical craving for narcotics and also to combat such debilitating side effects of withdrawal as nausea and extreme anxiety. By easing an addict’s symptoms of addiction and withdrawal, acupuncture facilitates the patient’s ability to receive other therapies, including counseling. Acupuncture treatment is based on … Read more

How do Dry Cleaners dry clean clothes without getting them wet?

how do dry cleaners dry clean clothes without getting them wet

The truth is dry cleaning is not entirely dry. Dry cleaners do apply liquids to silk dresses, it’s just that the stuff contains no water and furthermore dries quite rapidly. It doesn’t cause clothes to shrink or colors to run. Routine dry cleaning is done in large, closed machines using a volatile chemical called perchloroethylene … Read more

How can you tell what caste a person from India belongs to and What are the 4 varnas?

how can you tell what caste a person from india belongs to and what are the 4 varnas scaled

A caste, from the Portuguese word casta, meaning race, is a group of people sharing racial characteristics; in India the term is applied to the smallest endogamous groups existing within the general population. There are thousands and thousands of castes and subcastes in India, as many as thirty thousand by some estimates, which would make … Read more

How do tightrope walkers stay on the wire without falling off?

how do tightrope walkers stay on the wire without falling off

There are no real tricks to staying on a tightrope. One does it the same way one gets to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. Angel Quiros, a high-wire artist for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus has been walking the wire for sixteen years. One must be in good physical condition, he says, “but … Read more

When did Jimmy Hoffa disappear and How do they know Jimmy Hoffa is dead?

when did jimmy hoffa disappear and how do they know jimmy hoffa is dead

At about two in the afternoon on July 30, 1975, former head of the Teamsters Jimmy Hoffa left his suburban home in Bloomfield Hills, outside Detroit, and drove to a nearby restaurant called Machus Red Fox. Some forty-five minutes later, witnesses say, several gentlemen in a maroon Mercury sedan arrived at the restaurant, picked up … Read more

How does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decide who gets nominated for Oscars?

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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has 4,830 members, each with expertise in some branch of the film industry, who nominate their peers for the various Oscars. Cinematographers nominate cinematographers; directors nominate directors; actors nominate actors; and everyone nominates movies for the Best Picture Award. The nomination process begins at the end of … Read more

How do movie studios determine the profit of a Hollywood movie?

how do movie studios determine the profit of a hollywood movie

In the movie business, as in every other industry, profit equals gross revenue minus costs. For movies, the biggest money maker is box office ticket sales. Additional income is derived from video sales and rentals. Other movie markets include cable and free TV, airlines, and shiplines, but in general these ancillary outlets provide only a … Read more

How are rechargeable batteries made and What are batteries made of?

how are rechargeable batteries made and what are batteries made of

All batteries work by converting chemical energy into electric energy. The difference between primary, or non-rechargeable, and secondary, or rechargeable, batteries lies in the specific chemical reactions each battery type uses to produce an electron flow, which in batteries is electricity. In primary batteries the chemical reactions cannot be reversed, thus a primary battery can … Read more

How do editors choose cartoons for The New Yorker magazine?

how do editors choose cartoons for the new yorker magazine

Cosmopolitan cartoons have long been a trademark of The New Yorker. You can find the cartoonists’ names listed modestly at the end of the magazine’s table of contents under the heading “Drawings.” The term is a holdover from the late 1920s and ’30s, when New Yorker cartoons were sometimes written by one person and drawn … Read more

How is nonalcoholic beer made and How does vacuum distillation work?

how is nonalcoholic beer made and how does vacuum distillation work

Legally speaking, in the United States there is no such thing as nonalcoholic beer. According to government definition a nonalcoholic drink is a beverage that contains no alcohol of any sort. The law also maintains that a beverage containing less than 0.5 percent ethanol cannot be called beer. The end result is a semantic issue, … Read more

How do phone companies make telephones for the deaf and What does TDD stand for?

how do phone companies make telephones for the deaf and what does tdd stand for

A telecommunication device for the deaf, or TDD as they are commonly called, allows a conversation to be typed over the phone lines, permitting people with impaired hearing to read incoming messages. The devices, which resemble portable electric typewriters, are equipped with keyboards, light-emitting diode (LED) character displays that show the text electronically, and modems … Read more

How do doctors remove gallstones in the gallbladder without operating using Lithotripsy?

how do doctors remove gallstones in the gallbladder without operating using lithotripsy

Gallstones develop when bile in the gallbladder, a muscular little digestive organ tucked away behind the liver, becomes oversaturated with cholesterol. The gallbladder stores digestive bile from the liver, and too much cholesterol causes the bile to crystallize, a condition that leads to gallstones. Without treatment, gallstones can reach a size of two inches in … Read more

How do the Players Association and Major League Baseball find arbitrators for contract arbitrations?

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Like any other big business, professional baseball is divided between labor and management. Players are labor; they belong to the Major League Baseball Players Association, a trade union. Baseball team owners represent management. The Commissioner of Baseball oversees an organization called Major League Baseball, which acts as the governing body of the professional sport. Basically, … Read more

How do Editors write headlines for daily newspapers such as the New York Post?

how do editors write headlines for daily newspapers such as the new york post

Headlines sell the New York Post. A good one can boost sales by thirty thousand copies in a single day. At forty cents an issue, that’s $12,000 in additional revenue for Manhattan’s highest street-sale-circulation tabloid. Even more, a well-received “wood”, an idiom dating back to when headlines were carved from blocks of oak, massages the … Read more

How do ophthalmologists correct nearsightedness in ten minutes with radial keratotomy?

how do ophthalmologists correct nearsightedness in ten minutes with radial keratotomy

In 1974, a Soviet ophthalmologist named Svyatoslav Fyodorov developed a surgical procedure that has proved a speedy and sometimes very effective method for correcting nearsightedness. The basic idea is to alter the curve of the cornea, which is the window into the eye, by means of tiny surgical scars. Performed under local anesthesia, the procedure, … Read more

How do so many Japanese play golf in a country with so few golf courses?

how do so many japanese play golf in a country with so few golf courses

Golf has become something of a national pastime in Japan, claiming more than 12.5 million enthusiasts. They vie for playing time on the land-starved country’s few courses, which offer about as much elbow room as Grand Central Station at rush hour. These Japanese golf courses are unfathomably expensive, membership at Koganei Country Club in Tokyo … Read more