[Note the OP has rephrased this question more to his liking as of Dec 3, below]

What are the chances of getting hpv from oral sex, not the chances of oral cancer from hpv? I asked a similar question a few days ago. Whereismylunch (talk) 04:28, 29 November 2014 (UTC) ″[reply]

Fairly sure the answer will depend on factors like whether any form of barrier protection was used, the sex of the recepient, and whether you're referring to the risk to the receiving or giving/performing partner. Also the presence or absence of open sores or wounds on the mouth of the performing partner, the number of times and whether the people involved have HPV or at high risk of it (e.g. sex workers). The difficulty of seperating these means some figures will be averages of them (for example, I don't think anyone is going to try to come up with a figures for a person who's received oral sex 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x.... during their lives), but I don't think anyone is going to come up with a random single figure for the risk of getting HPV from oral sex. Nil Einne (talk) 13:36, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But on wikipedia they have a random single figure for aids from anal sex.Whereismylunch (talk) 18:11, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The question is not from receiving, but from giving oral sex, and I think we can just assume average numbers, not specific risk factors. Basically, the OP seems to be asking, of those who get oral cancer, how many can attribute it to a sexually transmitted HPV infection, not "what are my odds of getting oral cancer if I service a guy wearing a condom", which we wouldn't answer anyway. That being said, my understanding is the risk is measurable, but I have no Idea where I read that, so I am not about to venture a guess. I suspect I read it somewhere that was advocating that not only girls get the HPV vaccine. μηδείς (talk) 03:23, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Where was it stated it was from receiving not giving oral sex? It wasn't even stated the sex of the receiving partner. And so average numbers for what? I don't get the relevance of most of your later stuff. The point is that the OP hasn't sufficiently defined what they're asking for this to be answered in any meaningful way. (Note also as stated below there are multiple subtypes of HPV and I'm not sure these are always considered together.) In terms of your middle point, this [1] easily found from a simple search says "every year, over 9,000 men are affected by cancers caused by HPV". This includes those affecting "the anus, mouth/throat (oropharyngeal cancer), and penis". I'm sure you could come up with a value for those only affecting the mouth/throat. However it would be silly to assume the HPV always came from sexual contact, and even more flawed to assume that the sexual contact was from giving oral sex. Nil Einne (talk) 04:05, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I mistook this thread for the almost identical one that had just archived. μηδείς (talk) 22:14, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your question is not specific enough. It is better to ask, what are the chances of acquiring a HPV infection of subtype N by the person giving oral sex from the person receiving oral sex provided that the latter person has an active HPV infection with subtype N? The chances are probably high—in the range of tens of percent. However the vast majority of such infection are asymptomatic and will resolve on their own in a few months. Only a very small fraction will become chronic and potentially cancerogenic and only of subtype 16. Ruslik_Zero 03:40, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If I WP:AGF you are correct, then that should be fixed ASAP. It makes zero sense for any article on wikipedia to say that. For starters, while many people with HIV will eventually get AIDS, it's complicated and can take a while. For this reason, it's far better to talk about the chance of getting HIV not the chance of getting AIDS and few, if any, will talk about the chance of getting AIDS.

Secondly, nearly every single source will differentiate between the receiving or receptive partner and performing or insertive partner when it comes to the risk, as these can vary quite significantly.

Thirdly, the sex of the receiving receiving partner probably may not have a significant effect on the risk for anal sex in the generalised case. In the real world it may have an effect because the person may have a different risk profile and other factors. But actually this would apply to the giving partner in the oral sex case which I didn't mention because I was going to mention the later issues. (In "anal sex" practices where the insertive/giving partner is female like pegging, these normally aren't considered when it comes to anal sex. And female/male here refers to the sexual organs of simple cases. For intersex and other individuals where the partner may have a penis despite being female, I didn't mention that complexity.) In the oral sex case, it's quite important that we differentiate between fellatio and cunnilingus, both are which quite correctly and commonly described as oral sex yet are likely to have difference risk profiles, hence why I said the sex of the receiving partner is significant. (To be fair, anilingus]] may also be included which would include both sexes and isn't something I really mentioned.)

Since I can't find what you referred to (may be it's already been removed), I'll give a current example. Our HIV/AIDS#Sexual has risks. But it does differentiate between receptive and insertive partner. (And receptive is quite a large range.) It also assumes no barrier protection (condoms) were used. It's also referring to an average per act risk, and exposure to an infected source. And if you read the text, it gives further complications such as whether it's a low or high income country, and the presence of other STIs, and whether commercial sex work including prostitution is involved. This is an example of the complexity involved and why the article you referred to which gave a single figure probably should be changed. Note our article also mentions a value for oral sex (again differentating between receptive and insertive) but makes it clear it's referring to cases where the insertive partner is male. (The high/low income thing is interesting and not something I was aware of although I guess not surprising. Since we're talking about cases where condoms weren't used and the partner has HIV, these obviously aren't the reason. I would guess it's because of how well the HIV is controlled, the relative health of both partners, the number of conurrent STIs, perhaps also stuff like the usage of and type of lubrication and a bunch of other factors.)

Nil Einne (talk) 04:05, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I will re formulate my question and make it clearer. Just forget what I asked. What are the chances of catching the hpv virus from giving oral sex for men to someone who is infected? I already googled it yesterday and it said in one study it was less than 10 per 1000 person months for healthy men. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Whereismylunch (talk • contribs) 22:00, 30 November 2014 (UTC) Men giving it to women, not men giving it to men.Whereismylunch (talk) 22:07, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Molybdenum and tungsten is produced by roasting the oxides under hydrogen gas. What makes the ore of one metal better qualified over the ore of another? Which ores were this technique first applied to, for the purpose of refining the metals? Plasmic Physics (talk) 09:13, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Metals are smelted from ore using the chemical process of reduction. The material used as a reducing agent depends on the electronegativity of the metal. Some metals (like the ones in your example) have very low electronegativity and require extreme conditions to accomplish ore extraction, such as protecting the entire process within a reducing atmosphere. Mihaister (talk) 07:19, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Metals are normally smelted, but not always. In hydrogen roasting, hydrogen plays the role of the primary reducing agent, not just the reducing atmosphere. The key difference between smelting and roasting, is that smelting involves a molten phase at some point in the process, whereas roasting does not. An example would be the hydrogen roasting of chalcocite:

Cu
₂S + H
₂ → Cu + H
₂S

Plasmic Physics (talk) 07:42, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I stand corrected. Mihaister (talk) 07:51, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean What makes the ore of one metal better qualified over the ore of another – for roasting as opposed to smelting. It would be the melting point of the metal (and to some extent I suppose, the ticklish problem of removing unwanted other elements that occur in the ore, if refining was attempted in the molten state). After all, what would one line the crucible with to stop the crucible from melting? Even ZrO2 Ceramic Properties only go up to 2400°C!!! --Aspro (talk) 02:23, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks. How was the process historically applied? I'm after some light trivia to write into an article where this process is somewhat important in explaining the main topic. Plasmic Physics (talk) 02:32, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In that case you have come to the right place - I specialize in trivia - whatever its mass happens to be. Have a read of [2] Chapter One, page 1 & [3] page 143. As I vaguely recalled, it appears that the ore needs to be chemically purified before roasting. --Aspro (talk) 06:43, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The person might have been burned during re-entry. But he did not. But spacecrafts get fire during re-entry. Please explain why? --IEditEncyclopedia (talk) 10:39, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See Aerodynamic heating. The guy probably got warm from the friction, but he wasn't going fast enough to cause combustion. The typical "shooting star" comes into the atmosphere at a very high speed and burns quickly. Speed seems to be the key issue. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:27, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, try this: Rub your hands together very fast... Do they get warm? That's why things get hot on re-entry. Friction causes objects to heat up, the faster something is "rubbing" against something else, the more heat is generated. An object such as a meteor or a space craft is moving very fast indeed, and as such, generates a lot of friction with the air of the earth's atmosphere. --Jayron32 13:28, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Friction is too much of an over simplification when it comes to de-orbiting craft and lumps of comic rock. At these velocities the air stops moving before it gets to the leading surface (called something like the stagnation point). So low flow, low friction! The bulk of the heating comes from compression in this case. The temperature of this air at this point (when it has been turned to plasma) is enough to vaporize all known materials. Fortunately it is not in direct contact with the heat shield (because there is no flow) and so most of the thermal energy radiates away. At lower speeds, the air conducts away much of the heat caused by friction alone, because it is in contact and thus convention is the main method of heat transport. --Aspro (talk) 14:53, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An important point (not mentioned yet) is that the intrepid Mr Baumgartner only _fell_ to Earth, he was never in orbit. A spacecraft in orbit will be moving much more quickly on re-entry than one which has just been launched straight up, so there's much more energy to dissipate in atmospheric heating on reentry. Tevildo (talk) 15:17, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely! That's the huge difference between the two examples. For skydiving from orbit (via an emergency, one man, inflatable reentry device), see MOOSE.-- ToE 16:46, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. The free fall from a high altitude balloon is much slower than typical orbital speeds. For a somewhat analogous situation see also space elevator. Mihaister (talk) 23:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's not about the height you fall from - it's about the speed you were travelling when you started to fall.

When you start off at zero speed, you accelerate until you reach "terminal velocity", at which point the force due to the pressure of the air equals the force of gravity, and you stop going any faster. As the air gets progressively denser, your terminal velocity gradually decreases, and at no point are you going fast enough to produce significant problems. That's also why SpaceShipOne was able to get back to Earth without the need to heat-resistant tiles or an ablative heat shield. In the Baumgartner jump, the fastest speed he ever reached was around 850 mph.

When you start off in low-earth-orbit, you're initially moving at between 15,000 and 18,000 mile per hour...when you reach the atmosphere, you're already moving vastly faster than terminal velocity...and you are going so fast that you're reaching the denser air before you've shed enough speed.

Looked at another way, the amount of kinetic energy you have to burn off to reach the ground at a safe speed from orbit is phenomenal. Kinetic energy is proportional to the SQUARE of the speed...so not only is an orbital craft moving twenty times faster than Felix Baumgartner did - but the amount of energy needing to be shed (per kilogram of mass) was 400 times greater.

In terms of how that energy gets turned into heat, it's a bit complicated because some of the energy goes into heating up the object itself, and some into heating the air around it...and playing with the shape of the craft, the angle of re-entry, the nature of it's surfaces, makes it possible to dissipate most of the energy into the air rather than into the craft itself...but regardless of that, it's clear that there is so much more energy to get rid of when you fall from orbital speeds than if you fell from the same height but without being in orbit.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:54, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explanation, SteveBaker. --IEditEncyclopedia (talk) 10:51, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How can buildings be constructed to be able to support four meters of snow without being damaged?

• New York's Cuomo warns snow-hit Buffalo of risk to roofs—Reuters (November 24, 2014)

—Wavelength (talk) 17:32, 29 November 2014 (UTC) and 19:10, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Use a steeper roof pitch. Plasmic Physics (talk) 21:36, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How steep would it have to be to avoid all snow accumulation ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:30, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Houses built in Northern latitudes typically have steep roofs for this exact purpose. This image is from the main article on roofs. Mihaister (talk) 23:30, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the section heading is misleading. My question is about buildings actually supporting an accumulation of four meters of snow on their roofs, and not about techniques for deliberately avoiding snow accumulation.
—Wavelength (talk) 00:28, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In snow-bound areas, the solution to building damage from snow accumulation is to build structures where snow does not accumulate. If the snow crushes your roof in, the more sensible problem is to build a roof to allow the snow to slide off, rather than to accumulate. Does that mean that sometimes people in such areas sometimes build structures in an unintelligent way, so that the snow builds up and then caves in the roof? Yes, they do. But the best solution is to avoid letting snow accumulate in the first place. You can build structures to support the weight of the snow, After all, if you can build a bridge to support multi-ton trucks rumbling across them all day, you can apply the same principles to support multiple tons of anything, including snow. Any structure that will support the weight will support the weight. The question is whether such structures are economically sensible, or whether it just makes more sense to pitch your roof so snow doesn't gather. --Jayron32 01:49, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just add extra dead load of the said snow while designing the slab thickness if the structure is RCC.162.157.249.151 (talk) 03:54, 30 November 2014 (UTC)EEK[reply]

Some of those roofs in the picture don't look very snow resistant. Specifically, the ones that are attached to their neighbours. The snow would accumulate in the valleys and cause a leak problem at thaw time. Richard Avery (talk) 07:50, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think your concerns are really a problem. Those valleys are supported by load bearing walls and there are clearly visible drainspouts to handle the meltwater. The picture shows a good design for adjoining buildings to handle heavy snow.

I can't really speak for houses, but warehouses and other buildings with large roof areas may simply opt for large support structures that can take the weight. When I toured a DC facility in Owen Sound, for example, there were these thick steel support structures, much larger than anything I'd seen elsewhere for the size of the roof they supported. They weren't visible from the outside, but inside they gave the place something of the appearance of an enormous ribcage. They're not much different than normal columns and OWSJ, just much more robust. Matt Deres (talk) 13:22, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The method we use here in Finland is that the occupant buys a shovel. 88.112.50.121 (talk) 16:28, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that works well when there are upwards of five feet of snow on the roof. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:59, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It does work, although one would usually not let it get that thick, especially if it is older packed heavy snow. Shoveling a roof is easier than shoveling a similar amount from a driveway, as gravity helps a lot. 88.112.50.121 (talk) 17:20, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When you get several feet in the space of a few hours, as with Buffalo recently, it's pretty hard to avoid the problem. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:58, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

New snow is pretty light and fluffy, I've never seen a real world problem with it. People have lived here in Finland for 10,000 winters, and the best technology we have for snow on the roof is a shovel. If you come up with a better solution, please do tell. Maybe we can share patent income! Basing all architecture on highly sloped roofs -- thanks but no thanks. 88.112.50.121 (talk) 20:49, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Read what happened in Buffalo recently. And by the way, there is such a thing as a roof shovel, i.e. a scraper with a very long handle. But the citizens of Buffalo were overwhelmed by it all, and there many reports of collapsed roofs. That's probably what triggered the question here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:51, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just reporting how people who deal with the issue every year handle it, sir. 88.112.50.121 (talk) 00:03, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Helsinki gets 72 cm of snow a year - Buffalo gets 240 cm on average but in this storm got nearby Cowlesville got 223 cm in 3 days. Rmhermen (talk) 03:49, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So I suggest getting a shovel and getting busy with it. The alternative of suddenly re-architechting all your buildings to have steep pointy roofs is ...yeah, well, good luck with that.

It is funny to see people struggling with a simple perfectly natural thing. Like someone who discovers he needs to mow his grass, or that dead leaves need to be raked. Memo to all: you got to shovel your snow! 88.112.50.121 (talk) 05:36, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that it isn't unheard of to have snow guards/snow barriers (and it's a legal requirement in some cases) on roofs in Finland to protect people under the roof from excessive falling snow & make sure the snow accumulates in a safe fashion with respect to the load bearing structures [4] [5] [6] and perhaps also to keep a minimum level of snow for insulation (per our article).

Not from Finland but as an alternative to shoveling [7]. (Although I'm not denying that shoveling is the most common method, albeit sometimes with assitance particularly for commercial buildings File:Snow removed from roof Keljo.jpg File:Snow removed from roof Keljo closeup.jpg & Commons:Category:Snow removal from roofs.)

That said, I think Rmhermen, BB et al do have a point that it's flawed to automatically assume there's something wrong just because people and structures are able to deal with something in one area when it causes greater problems in another area, particularly without considering how similar the situation actually is, the frequency of such events or how out of the ordinary it is, and the reasons such differences in the way things are dealt with might exist. In particular, most places have problems dealing with extremely rare events, I doubt Finland is any different.

Also e.g. [8] [9] (many of the articles relate to snow on roofs) or even our article snow removal has some info on snow on roofs.

It's not like roofs have never collapsed in Finland [10] or there isn't such concern [11]. In fact [12] is designed to provide warnings for when shovelling is necessary and appears to have been developed in Finland [13]. (Although more limited similar ideas may exist [14] [15].)

And there are other risks besides the roof collapsing, as the presence of snow guards illustrate [16] [17] [18]. The shovelling itself obviously caries some risks [19] [20] (the video is from Estonia but the uploader appears to be from Finland). This Finnish person [21] seems to understand that albeit in relation to a different case.

Nil Einne (talk) 13:02, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Another factor to remember is insulating the ceiling or roof. If the roof gets warm, the snow sticks to it more, and ice forms more. If the roof stays cold, the snow slides off more easily.122.108.177.30 (talk) 07:15, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it's the opposite. If the snow disappears from the roof sooner than it does for your neighbors with similar roof styles, it means your house is improperly insulated - too much heat is escaping through the roof. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:13, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you pick ants from one ant colony and place them in a totally distinct (but of the same species) ant colony, would they come well along? --Senteni (talk) 19:15, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There has been considerable research on this topic. A Google Scholar search for 'ant colony recognition' will provide a starting point. [22] Ants communicate via scent (notably pheromones), and it seems that each colony (or possibly supercolony [23]) has a distinct scent. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:30, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, but the tolerances and differentiation vary amongst species and this may be a factor in which species form supercolonies and the degree of genetic uniformity within and between separate colonies. Further, there are some parasitic species who will intrude upon a closely-related colony and exist as a distinct genetic population within it without producing their own workers, and in these cases the parasitic species seems to be exploiting the fact that the pheromones employed are (apparently) innately known and universally recognized by the host species. But still other parasitic species will exploit the fact that some species have colonies that establish a scent that falls within certain constraints but varies from population to population, a scent that individuals are fine-tuned to recognize in development and which is therefore in a sense "learned" by the resulting superorganism; parasitic species in this context will sometimes attempt to install their own queen before the first broods are born, in order to either cohabitate with the, to completely leverage their work for themselves, or to simply leave the host colony disorganized until the physical burrows can be captured by a working population developed from their own offspring.

To answer the OP's question more directly and succinctly: in rare instances, yes -- one could integrate a migrant ant -- but not in most cases.Snow talk 02:16, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Two examples: I was told by an entomology professor that an individual worker pharoah ant could be flown from NYC to LA (or Tokyo, etc) and could rejoin a colony there. Also the Argentine ant is thought to be so invasive in the USA because of a founder effect, wherein all invasions are related because they came from the same few queens. So, in their natural range they have small colonies that fight eachother, while in their introduced range different colonies aren't sensed as rivals, and giant supercolonies form. It all really depends on the specific species and how they sense kin/colony relationships. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:44, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That is a fascinating aspect of the Argentine ant that I actually had forgotten about, but which perfectly demonstrates how divergent genetic variation and population size can be for the same species in different ecological niches. The Argentine ant proved so successful as an invasive species on several continents that one particular closely-interrelated (if massive) genetic population grew to encompass huge range of territory consisting of vast numbers of genetically similar individuals and colonies, while it stayed (relatively) constrained in it's orignal and more localized South American habitat, where it co-existed with other more closely-related and similarly capable subspecies and species, and other competitors/constraining species that it had co-evolved with. In other words, it might just as easily have been another similar population with most of the same traits but whom would be sharing their own unique phenotype for pheromones and leveraging their vast numbers to out-compete both the native species and any other Argentine subspecies/close relatives who might otherwise migrate. Snow talk 14:30, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ants also detect colony mates via signatures of hydrocarbons on the cuticle (which are different from pheremones). Some species will attack a con-colonial worker if she is washed off by humans. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:09, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I had meant to mention as well that there are other types of chemoreceptors utilized by ants for communication and navigation. Although at the same time, ants are amongst the the very few organisms in which the role of pheromones is not overstated in popular science reporting; most all species of ant rely on them to some varying (but generally very significant) degree that is often well-documented; whereas the pheromones used, or purported to be used, in countless other species (vertebrate and invertebrate) are often overstated and/or not particularly well understood. Snow talk 14:30, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, you can cross a horse and a donkey to make an ass or a mule, and a lion and tiger to make a liger, or a dolphin and a false killer whale to make a wolphin. Could humans theoretically mate with orangutans or chimpanzees and produce offspring? Would the offspring be viable? Horatio Snickers (talk) 20:31, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For starters, we do have some info in our article on humanzee. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:36, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here are various facts and theories about how our very great-grandparents may or may not have bred with Neanderthals, Denisovans and their ilk. So there's a glimmer of hope for a chimpboy, but if it were already possible, we'd already have at least enough for a case study in a medical journal somewhere. Humans have been getting halfway there for a long time. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:17, November 30, 2014 (UTC)

Reminds me of when AIDS was first gaining major publicity and it was alleged to have originated in apes. Frank Zappa said, "Why I want to know is, who's screwing those monkeys?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:27, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If this subject disturbs you, do not swim with seals or dolphins. In any case, most reports of humanzees are just the unfortunate sufferers of Gandler-Kreukheim Syndrome. μηδείς (talk) 03:08, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As we have an article on Next (novel) perhaps this malady is eligible to be added to List of fictional diseases.--Aspro (talk) 03:35, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There was also the hypothesis (I use the term loosely) proposed a number of years ago that humans are what came out after a chimp had sex with a pig. Evan ^{(talk|contribs)} 18:47, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It should almost certainly be possible to produce a chimera (honestly, I'd thought that by now some interpersonal squabble at an in vitro fertilization clinic would have gotten out of control and led to this...). I don't expect the hybridization to be easy or else we would know about it; what being hard means is that one guy trying it in 1919 is not proof it could never work. In theory, of course, with enough effort (a gene by gene germline replacement trial, conducted over countless generations) someone could surely make it work, but there's a vast chasm between the preposterous amount of resources that implies and the reality that so few people even attempt it. Wnt (talk) 09:43, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• A chimera is not a hybrid. It is basically a random blend of cells that can look like a note sent by a serial killer with letters cut out of random publications. Look at this chimera between two different genera of mice, and note the assymmetry of the eyes, to say the least. In a civilized society you'd be looking at ostracism, defrocking, and all sorts of civil and criminal abuse charges if you did such a thing. μηδείς (talk) 17:55, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, obviously. Actually, I wouldn't bet on your odds if you have sex with a chimpanzee, even if she sign languages the judge that she thinks you're really pretty. But some lucky dog would get to study the resulting beings, and others would be paid to pontificate well nigh endlessly on their human rights and status and bioethics. Wnt (talk) 04:57, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that might be of interest, were it a grammatical English sentence, Wnt. μηδείς (talk) 03:12, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is English, which gives us the inalienable right to verb whatever we want, including "sign language". :) Wnt (talk) 06:22, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A few years ago I was looking at weapons or brain waves or electromagnetic radiation articles (something of that nature) and I found an article stating that a potential item exists that could cause females to orgasm from a distance. I am familiar with search operators and advanced search techniques but I can't seem to find the article. Please help. Thanks. Judasschwarz (talk) 22:45, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like the plot line of Flesh Gordon. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:47, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is this the only response I'll get? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Judasschwarz (talk • contribs) 22:53, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What have you found in Google so far? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:01, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of stuff related to porn and a movie title "Orgasmo". I've also used Google to search Wikipedia articles containing terms weapons, electromagnetic, sonic, microwave, directed, energy, orgasm, non-lethal along with the - parameter to remove useless links. I wish I could use "intext" exclusively so that pages with a term in the title (orgasm in this instance) wouldn't come up. I don't know if that's possible or how to do that though.Judasschwarz (talk) 23:09, 30 November 2014 (UTC) edit- combined those search terms in various combinations.[reply]

You can do a "-intitle:orgasm" (no quotes). You'll need a separate one for the plural. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:20, November 30, 2014 (UTC)

Thanks I'm looking now with that parameter. I've also considered using The Wayback Machine. I have some experience using it but haven't used it to perform this sort of advanced searching. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Judasschwarz (talk • contribs) 23:54, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It was the key plot point in Orgazmo. That alone doesn't necessarily mean it's also not real, but it makes it feel that way. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:04, November 30, 2014 (UTC)

A quick Google search on "neurological orgasm weapon" brings up (a) lots of pages (mainly written in primary colours on a black background in ALL CAPS) by people who claim to be victims of them, and (b) references to this 2008 paper (see, for example, this article from the Guardian). The name Robert Galbraith Heath is also a common feature. Make of this what you will. Tevildo (talk) 00:05, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Judasschwarz (talk • contribs) 00:13, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also is this: "(mainly written in primary colours on a black background in ALL CAPS)" a clue to something? I don't understand what that statement was added for. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Judasschwarz (talk • contribs) 00:17, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that sort of website design is very common among people with unorthodox views of the world. I was just noting that people who believe they have been attacked by the CIA with "neurological weapons" - an unorthodox view by most standards - seem to follow this pattern. Tevildo (talk) 00:55, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. At least that's what I grabbed from the hint. Using all-caps is GENERALLY CONSIDERED SHOUTING LIKE A MADMAN!!! And colourful text can uncomfortably distracting. If someone showed up on your doorstep, like a Mormon dressed in a silly pink and white costume with a purportedly true message about orgasms, it's natural to feel skeptical. Same applies to the web. Wikipedia is where it is because we dress the part. (That link was merely at the top for "black white blue suit". Any similarity to Jimmy Wales is a purely eerie coincidence.) InedibleHulk (talk) 01:00, December 1, 2014 (UTC)

Lol, understood. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Judasschwarz (talk • contribs) 01:04, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The concept exists in science fiction, certainly—in Larry Niven's Known Space books, such a device is called a tasp. (Niven's books also present a wired, non-remote version called a droud.) Direct electrical stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain is portrayed as potently habit-forming; addicts are sometimes called wireheads. The latter article, interestingly, provides some real-life examples of such stimulation (under controlled conditions); it seems to be just as attractive as science fiction suspected. As far as I know, there is no extant technology for carrying out such stimulation remotely and noninvasively. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:19, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No fair, I was just going to say Tasp. Niven also invented flash crowds. μηδείς (talk) 01:40, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And one of those stories contains the phrase "a stack of TVs, big ones almost an inch thick." —Tamfang (talk) 08:07, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That reminds me, it was also in at least one softcore space porn. Can't remember if it was Femalien, Emmanuelle in Space, Andromina: The Pleasure Planet, Veronica 2030 or Femalien II. Pretty sure it wasn't Sex Files: Alien Erotica, but might have been Alien Sex Files 3: Aliens Gone Wild. I'd had enough of the genre by the time that one came out. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:04, December 1, 2014 (UTC)

Are you think of that whore-er movie Barbarella in the Ogasmatron? Whilst on the subject. A beam of photons shone through crystalline carbon can have a funny effect on some people from quite a distance. Just a five carat stone in a jewellers window with a sign announcing Sale Now On is effective along a whole boulevard if the sun shines upon it.--Aspro (talk) 04:02, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, it wasn't that. Definitely later 90s, during the Baby Blue Movies res-erection (absolutely no pun intended) or Fridays Without Borders. Almost certain it was Emmanuelle in Space, but which one? Haven't seen Handful of Diamonds, but the pub scene sounds gripping. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:29, December 2, 2014 (UTC)

I'd be immensely surprised if any amount of searching turns up even a hint of serious research in terms of a device that could trigger an orgasm at a distance. For one thing, the mechanisms necessary for inducing the neurochemical changes implicit in such a feat would have to be so complex and so specifically targeted that, aside from being well beyond our current understanding, by the time you developed this technology you'd almost certainly already have the capability to incapacitate someone through means that would certainly be more practical for a weapon (by causing them to go unconscious, driving them into an agitated state, inducing intense pain or disrupting their senses or their ability to think clearly, all of which would be much easier to achieve -- and all of which, come to think of it, have been studied in recent times as possible avenues for a weapon that acts upon the brain at a distance). The only possible "advantage" a weapon that specifically induced and orgasm might offer over these approaches as a weapon would be a (reprehensibly) psychological one, in much the same way rape is sometimes employed in war to demoralize and humiliate.

Putting aside that piece of science-fiction, utilizing chemical aphrodisiacs is a tactic that has been considered by modern states a number of times, as several vague concepts or plans were hatched (but to the best of my knowledge never pursued very far) in which a laced water supply or aerosol would be employed, with an assault to coincide with the resulting love-in. It's just as well -- I mean, it might seem like the most horrific example, but would still almost certainly qualify as a chemical attack forbidden by modern international law and indeed one that could lead to significant health concerns for those involved, be it from physical reactions to the chemical itself, STD's, psychological impact and the possibility of resulting rape (again, the factor of a "love" weapon that goes under-considered).

To add yet another Sci-fi reference to those noted by others above, the last two books written by Frank Herbert for his Dune saga include a sexual weapon that comes in the form of women who are capable of enslaving huge populations of men with their wiles. For me it was one of the very few places in those otherwise absolutely genius books where I felt like the kind of social/psychological weapons that are common to the work jumped the shark just a bit. And of course a man ultimately defeats their capabilities by being even more of a sexual dynamo... Snow talk 23:16, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Niven came up with the chemical aphrodisiacs as well, in his Ringworld series, especially the vampire people. μηδείς (talk) 02:13, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I did add a tad of detail to "orgasmatron" non-fiction usage in 2008, but that certainly isn't ranged. Still, it invites a theoretical suggestion that some very strong electromagnetic stimulation might have related effect. Also, some artists I wouldn't want within a hundred miles of me claim to have done it with infrasound.^[24] Still, biology is variable ... I'm sure that if you survey enough women you'll find one who can achieve genuine orgasm purely by watching a Taylor Kitsch movie. :) Wnt (talk) 09:22, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

During the cold war, Wright Laboratory produced a series of short papers on highly unconventional weapons. One of those (to pick an example close to this one) was the infamous Gay bomb which was supposed to cause (male) enemy troops to suddenly turn gay and start hitting on each other after being sprayed with female pheremones from a chemical weapon of some kind - the idea being that they'd be effectively incapacitated and unable to fight! These (often horribly politically incorrect) ideas were almost never carried beyond those very short paper studies - and they seem to be wildly unlikely to work. However, some of them did get funded, experimentally (consider Project MKUltra that attempted to use LSD as a mind-control drug - or the Convair NB-36H nuclear-powered aircraft that actually flew over Fort Worth, Texas with an unshielded nuclear reactor aboard!). So if it ever existed (and I could find no evidence of that), it's highly likely that your idea was amongst those cold-war concept weapons. Lots of crazy things were dreamed up during the cold war - the research laboratories had more or less unlimited funding and minimal government oversight - so they tended to fund small think-tanks to put up ideas like this. In light of how recently that kind of "crazy" blue-sky thinking had revolutionized warfare by producing the atom bomb - you can see what it wasn't a bad idea to do that. So they'd have a bunch of smart people meet in a conference room once in a while and be instructed to list whatever comes to mind without constraints of any kind (practical, moral, financial, scientific or otherwise). The cost to do that is utterly negligible - and the potential reward could be something as ground-breaking at the Manhatten Project. However, when they turned those meetings into brief summary documents - and those are eventually declassified - you get a document that appears to be saying that the US government did research into making men turn gay...which couldn't be further from the truth. SteveBaker (talk) 14:31, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Did the article say why the orgasms were limited to females? Why would it be an effective weapon unless the enemy's army had a lot of women, which most armies don't? --Bowlhover (talk) 02:04, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A state's enemy isn't always an army. Sometimes protesters, rioters or opposition voters. They can release the hounds on animal activists, break a steel strike with rubber bullets or spend a billion in tax to secure anti-capitalists behind a fence. What better way to ruin a feminist demonstration than blasting demeaning rap through a loudspeaker, making everyone come, filming a viral video and insisting women's bodies did it to themselves? That's what really hurts. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:49, December 3, 2014 (UTC)

I recently asked an economics question here, and it was moved to the humanities desk. I thought that was odd. I can't see how economics could tell us anything useful if it doesn't follow the scientific method. Is economics a science?--79.97.222.210 (talk) 01:42, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on who you ask. Our article, definitions of economics, cites several famous historians and economists who use "science" in the definition of economics. The article also cites several textbooks and reviews that categorize economics among other sciences. The very same article lists many more reputable sources who do not use "science" in the definition.

Most accredited universities do not administer the department of economics alongside physical sciences. Some universities administer economics departments alongside the mathematics department. Many universities jointly administer their departments of art and science, blurring the distinction. So, at least among academic circles, there is room for debate about how things should be categorized.

Economics can be approached using the scientific method. This approach is applied less universally to economics than, say, to physics or chemistry.

For the purposes of the Wikipedia:Reference desk, our present categorization places economics within the scope of WP:RDH. This is consistent with the Dewey Decimal System and the Library of Congress Classification: both systems place Economics between Law and Politics, and quite distant from the "Science" category.

Nimur (talk) 02:54, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to think of economics as a bit of both. In a closed system where currency is based on the value of bullion and there is no borrowings or interest, then it is simple mathematics. As soon as Kings (and later) politicians started to debase the coinage (inflation) and invented new financial tools such as credit/debt, etc., and used these tools to buy popularity, wage war, stimulate the fishing industry to ensure a ready supply of seafarers for the navy to recruit in time of crisis (referring here to Queen Elisabeth I ) things got more complicated and less reality based. Now, Economists (with a capital E) just make it up as they go. Then they try and find reasons why they think they are right and why they think everybody else is wrong. So, today it has become an open dynamic system that is too complicated to model with any certainty. Since as soon as the model gets updated and refined, it is already out of date.--Aspro (talk) 02:57, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Economics is a social science. Social sciences indeed are sciences, since they employ the scientific method, but when topics are classified (classification = when you put each thing in one basket, and it can't go in more than one) for practical purposes, the social sciences are generally put with the humanities and not with the sciences. This is apparently because of what the social sciences and the humanities study — they're not the same of course, but in general, they're a lot closer to each other than either one is to the hard sciences. If you have different baskets for English literature and chemistry and you're trying to decide which basket gets economics, you'll probably put it with English literature simply because the subjects are a lot more similar: they deal with different aspects of the human experience (neither one would be around without humans), while chemistry is independent of humans, and human biology (being just the human branch of zoology) would be about the same if we didn't have enough intelligence to study human biology. There are still some difficulties (psychology deals with human behavior and the biology of the brain, so where does it go; archaeology is a kind of anthropology, a social science, but it relies heavily on geology and other hard sciences; and is history in the social sciences or the humanities), which you can see reflected in how JSTOR divides its journals by subject, so sometimes we simply have to be a little arbitrary. Nyttend (talk) 04:29, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Social sciences in general (and economics in particular) is generally characterized by the extreme difficulty in creating and running controlled, reproducible experiments. Economics may make a prediction (factor X will produce economic result Y under conditions Z), but then how does one run a controlled experiment which produces reliable results? You can't create carefully controlled human experiments which can be run over and over and which can reliably produce identical results. That's part of the problem with classifying economics as a science, and why "social sciences" in general get classified with humanities and not other hard sciences. If I want to run an experiment on, say, the way a spring reacts to forces, I can run the experiment as much as I want, get scrupulously reliable results, and then use those results to make predictions about other springs which I can have faith will work as predicted based on past results. Social sciences isn't able to do that. At best we can make rough predictions based on historical results, but conditions are NEVER identical, and forecasts for that reason are quite fuzzy, and only marginally better than dumb luck. --Jayron32 12:25, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, I find I'm often the one usually calling the assertions particular social sciences (or particular research in the social sciences) as speculative and not supported by altogether rigorous empirical practice, rather than defending them as I'm about to, but I do feel you've gone to a bit of an extreme in how you've described them here. There are in fact many, many spheres of the social sciences that are quite to respectable side of "hard" science, with perfectly reproducible methods, such as the cognitive sciences (though granted they are based as much in physical/biological phenomena as social), psychology, and certain areas of linguistics, to mention just the three of the areas that most stand out to me. Not that reproducibility is even considered an absolute feature of all good work done in the "hard" sciences, much of which relies on modelling and other theoretical work that cannot be immediately tested or wherein a large margin of variation with current testing methodology and technology is initially expected; failure to understand the role of such modelling can sometimes lead to very poor understanding of the modern application of the scientific method with regards to modelling, with sometimes problematic consequences. Furthermore, not even the most rigorous physical science exists in a state of absolute reproducibility, and most all experimental science inhabits various areas on the spectrum of statistical inference. Consider also that human beings often vary as much in their "purely" biological make-up as they do with regards to psychological responses, but I've never seen epidemiology called out as "soft" science for it's reliance on data which covers huge variances amongst individuals.

As someone who comes both from a background of the hard (biological) sciences and one involving those fields which neatly straddle physical and social phenomena (cognitive science, linguistics, and sensory perception studies), and who firmly believes that the latter have, through the cleverness and insight of good researchers in their approach to methodology, attained basically the same level of empirical integrity as the former, I will say that in my experience, most academics and researchers inhabiting this middle area have an a pretty robust respect for economics as one of those fields in the social sciences which has made some fairly strong predictions on behaviour that seem to have been born out consistently by evidence. There are a few reasons for this, but three stand out as particularly relevant in making results stable and predictable. First, at least as regards macroeconomics, the population sizes and datasets can be quite massive, which is obviously always quite desirable when attempting to control for variation and confounding factors. Second, behaviours in economics, as indeed with all kinds of psychological phenomena, are not perfectly random amongst humans; point in fact, modern understanding of the human mind continues to show us again and again how hard-wired the brain can be to approaching certain problems and how universally (or near universally) individuals respond to certain situations, sometimes even when logical analysis shows that universal trait to be a behaviour which, intuitively at least, is quite irrational and problematic (see Game theory and Decision theory, for example). And third, economists favour approaches to prediction which are based largely on mathematical models suggested by the data rather than making sweeping assumptions about the state of mind of the participants, which is often an area they speculate on only after their statistical analysis of that which was known absolutely to have happened -- or which they wisely avoid altogether. This is a very, very different approach from such social sciences as sociology and cultural anthropology, which often do form complex (and dare I say it, convoluted, speculative, and impressionistic) theories which either make empirically questionable assumptions or else don't really provide a lot of concrete information in terms of clear and scientifically valid mechanisms that increase our knowledge of the phenomena studied in a significant way.

In short, and as regards which fields and which particular areas of research exist where on the spectrum of hard to soft science, the social sciences are not nearly all created equal and suggesting as much betrays a significant misconception of how some of these fields operate and present their evidence. Indeed, some of them have more rigorous standards of proof than many theoretical areas of the physical sciences that most would not dream of calling soft. Neither A) the statement that social sciences are altogether lacking in reproducibility or firm, clearly delineated and testable assumptions, nor B) the assertion that reproducibility is an absolute feature of all insightful science take into account the complexities of modern research in these areas. I certainly understand the kind of soft (or as you put it, "fuzzy") research you were trying to reference -- I often find myself rolling my eyes at work at the extremely soft ends of these fields too; as much of my undergrad work was in linguistics, I had to take many a sociology course which I'd just as soon avoided and by the end I think I would have pulled my hair out by the roots if I'd had to read one more "theory" that utilized the overly-wrought idiolect that predominates in that field to try to hide the fact that the author wasn't actually making any kind of insight but rather using convoluted prose to imply some kind of significant new way of looking at an issue without actually genuinely informing on it any significantly empirical way. But all of that said, you way, way overstated the argument and threw into the same bag massive bodies of good science and huge traditions of empirically valid research, in a way which I do not feel is remotely factually representative of those fields. Beware of over-generalization with regard to subjects of such massively far-reaching implications; it's not very scientific. :P And certainly as regards economics in particular, at least as concerns researchers utilizing quantifiable data it is absolutely a science of applied mathematics and statistics -- I don't even know what other broad handle for human endeavors you could reasonable use to describe it, if not calling it a science. It's only where this avenue of inquiry intersects with politics, ideology and policy-making that the term refers to a less empirical pursuit, and that's honestly true of any number of other fields. In other words, this can be described as a philosophy of economics and this is clearly an application of economics as a science (regardless of how accurate you view the findings of either). Snow talk 21:44, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is getting more scientific and can produce reasonable results. However a lot of the people involved have political ideas that override any scientific detachment or don't understand about motives except for greed and poverty. I think there is still quite a bit of truth in the old joke about the difference between philosophy and economics. In one they ask a different question each year and expect the same answer, for the other they ask the same question each year and expect a different answer. ;-) Dmcq (talk) 13:05, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What is the use of Wikipedia as a whole in the context of hard science?

I don't understand the justification of time spent here by intelligent people whom are desperately needed in our society in so many other areas.

I see no logic in purpose as an open and accurate knowledge database of humanity, as noble as founding intent may have been. While much open history of discussion exists and is quite telling for the individual with the time and drive to search through it, there remains a power structure and ability to delete certain data, which always invites corruption and bias at some level.

If someone has a clue, or "theory", please let me know.2601:8:8F00:CA:55CA:998D:E18C:7BC0 (talk) 03:29, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are you asking if it's a good use of effort to be maintaining coverage of hard-science topics here? Many of our science experts are professional scientists who edit here in their spare time; if they want to relax by writing about their professional specialties, more power to them. It's the same in other fields, both scientific and not; Doc James is a doctor who writes a lot about medicine (see his biographical article for information relevant to your answer), Arthur Rubin is a mathematician who has written a good deal about mathematical topics (again, see his biography), and Acroterion (there's no article about him) is an architect who writes a lot about architecture. Nyttend (talk) 04:18, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Err. How do think we the intelligent people (your words not mine) got to be so, if it wasn't for the previous generation of intelligent people taking time out from other worthy pursuits to pass their knowledge and wisdom on to us. Education and access to knowledge is now an essential part of 'our' societal needs. Is that rational not justification enough. Don't you think progress of human-kind would stagnate, if new advancements in technology (like papyrus then paper for writing, printing presses, correspondence courses which took advantage of a reliable postal system, etc., etc.) were ignored? As for a power structure and ability to delete certain data. This has always been the case. Even back when knowledge was passed on by oral tradition only, individuals probable edited out and added stuff to satisfy their on whims and fancies.--Aspro (talk) 04:23, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Access to information is a key required for development. Yes Wikipedia is not perfect but it is 1) the best we have for a freely accessible general overview 2) is very extensively read Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:25, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. Perhaps Theory X and Theory Y might be an interesting article for you. Lots of people like to be useful. Dmcq (talk) 12:54, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia does not aim to improve "hard science". It aims at spreading knownledge. There should not be a general "justification of time spent here" because this would be Taylorism. If you like, the number of readers every day seems justification enough. If you think its a waste of time, keep your opinion. --Kharon (talk) 09:13, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What is the meaning of endorse and endorsement in the following context: "Significance of Endorsement of Psychotic Symptoms by US Latinos. In US regional studies, Latinos frequently endorse psychotic symptoms associated with impairment and mental health service use, yet do not meet criteria for psychotic disorder." I did check endorsement but it didn't help much... Thank you! Lova Falk talk 13:29, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

From a "Handbook of Psychology" - 'report or endorse symptoms' [25]. Here is another fairly random article from a psychiatry journal that uses "endorse" to basically mean "report" [26]. The first link is the best I've come up with for a ref that defines the usage, but it does seem very common, search "endorse symptom" on google or google scholar for many similar examples. This is not the definition given by this (not terribly high quality) medical dictionary: [27]. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:10, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think "endorse" means that when you ask a question about it, they answer "yes". "Report" means that they tell you about it on their own initiative, without needing a specific yes-or-no question. Looie496 (talk) 17:51, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

why is it cold at the north and south poles of the earth?Whereismylunch (talk) 00:36, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Because the sun doesn't shine as strongly there as it does at the equator. See our article on seasons for some detail. If the north pole faced the sun, it would be much hotter than the equator, and the south pole would be even colder because it would never see sunshine. Dbfirs 00:41, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think you mean rather to say that if the Earth's rotational axis was directly parallel to the plane upon which its orbit lays, such that if the North Pole pointed directly towards the sun, then it would result in the situation you describe. Point in fact, the North Pole does face the sun sometimes and gets just as much average sunlight, adjusting for cloud cover and other climatological factors, as any other point. In fact, during half the year it gets more sunlight than the equator. The differences in temperature have more to do with the timing and consistency of this radiation and the way temperature is dispersed along the Earth's surface, and with the fact that snow reflects a good deal of that radiation, than it does with the amount of light that actually falls on a particular patch over the course of the year. Snow talk 01:20, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It actually never gets more sunlight (in terms of total energy) than the equator. It gets more hours of sunlight for a good portion of the year, but the light it gets is dimmer because the light always strikes at an oblique angle. Sit in a dark room and aim a flashlight directly at the table. You see a bright circle. At the same distance, if you tip the light at an angle, you find that the brightness of the circle dims considerably. The light from the sun strikes the poles at an angle, even at the solstice the angle is pretty pronounced, so even when the north pole is leaning towards the sun, it is still receiving less total light than the equator is on any given day. It's the angle the light strikes at, more than anything else, which determines the average temperatures of the various latitudes. --Jayron32 01:37, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're part right. Averaged over a year, the poles receive about half as much total energy as the equator. That difference is the main reason the poles are much colder than the equator. However, there are days (such as the solstices) when the poles actually receive more total energy per day than the equator. [28] Dragons flight (talk) 01:57, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that link. I stand corrected. --Jayron32 02:03, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, good caveat -- absolutely, obliquity influences the overall amount of photons that strike a given surface point on the Earth, or any body in relation to a light source. For the starting purposes of the OP I was most interested that he first receive a correct and proper visualization as to the relative alignment of the astral bodies in question, which is what I meant to be correcting there. But I suppose I should have said that any given point gets an even given surface point of the Earth gets a roughly equal amount of exposure to the sun, as opposed to an identical amount of sunlight. Of course, even that isn't exactly perfectly accurate, owing to variations in surface topography. Snow talk 02:22, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I should have said averaged over the year, the poles get less than half the total amount of sunshine (insolation) that the equator gets. The sun is never as strong (rate of transfer of heat) at the poles as it is at the equator. Dbfirs 08:14, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I once read somewhere or other (I have heaps of sources just as reliable!) that if the axial tilt were more than 54° then the poles would be warmer than the equator. I never got around to trying the math on that one. —Tamfang (talk) 09:28, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• There are some good illustrations and relevant info at insolation. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:34, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there's a formula that should prove Tamfang's claim, but the problem with applying just the formula is that a change in axial tilt would dramatically and unpredictably change the airflow and cloud cover, so a much more complex model would be needed to make accurate predictions about polar temperatures. Dbfirs 19:05, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Would a square, if I hold it perpendicular to the sun's rays, receive almost the same amount of sunlight everywhere on Earth?--Senteni (talk) 20:17, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No. If you held the square at the poles, it would always receive less light per second than at the equator. The exact amount of light it receives per second will depend on exactly where you are and what day of the year it is, but the amount of light falling on your square varies; the reason it varies is not because any part of the earth is any greater distance from the sun, but because the angle the light strikes the surface of the earth is markedly different at different points on it. The Earth is, after all, a sphere (or very close to it). --Jayron32 20:23, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jayron, I think Senteni meant to hold the square perpendicular to the sun's rays. Dbfirs 20:28, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, it would receive quite a bit less when the sun is near the horizon because then the sunlight has much more air to travel through before it hits your square, and it loses light and some heat as it passes through the air (more loss towards the blue end of the spectrum). Dbfirs 20:25, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Because PEA is made via Decarboxilation of L-Phenyalaline, I guess that PKU Patients have somewhat lower levels of Phenylethylamine... Now, because this Neuromodulator is associated with some forms of Appetite regulation (especially "Emotional appetite"), do you find it logical to assume that PKU subjects will have a slightly bigger chance for being overweight? thanks. Ben-Natan (talk) 02:56, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note, I ask the question after encountering some articles that have seem to contradict one eacherother. Ben-Natan (talk) 03:02, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, what you're asking for is more in the realm of speculation on our part than sources (which you already have), which puts the request a bit outside the realm of what we are meant to be supplying here; but even putting the Ref Desks' specific guidelines out of the picture for the moment, this strikes me as the type of question that just about any neurophysiologist would decline to speculate on under most contexts, unless they had foreknowledge of, or access to, clinical findings exploring that very question. Neuromodulation of any sort is a fantastically complex process and just because one modulator has been associated with a given metabolic, behavioural, or cognitive/perceptual process does not necessarily mean one could predict an observable effect to the pathway in question as a result of a specific threshold of availability, especially not a prediction that runs cleanly and consistently in one-direction. Would you mind providing the conflicting sources in question? I for one feel more on solid ground assessing sources on the matter, and possibly supplying new clarifying sources, than I do speculating on a matter that would involve a massive chain of assumptions, any of which could be erroneous. Snow talk 04:19, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For example: 1, 2, 3, 4. Ben-Natan (talk) 15:01, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ben-Natan, sorry for the delay in response. I only have access to the abstracts of those papers just at the moment, but I believe that alone may be sufficient to explain the discrepancies you've been seeing. These papers do indeed look into the issue of whether those suffering from PKU are predisposed to a higher BMI and rates of obesity, but they do not speculate as to the mechanism you were suggesting (that a reduction of phenylethylamine leads to poor modulation of appetite). Rather the concern stems from the fact that one common aspect of treatment for PKU is a diet low in phenylalanine, which often means that said diet is high in carbohydrates, which in itself tends to predispose one to being overweight or obese. The studies do seem to have vaguely divergent findings as to whether there is a significant degree of predisposition to higher BMI in PKU patients relative to the general population, but it's worth noting that there is a lot of variety in both the populations utilized (for both control and PKU patients), in terms of nationality, age, and sex -- so a certain degree of variety in the findings is to be expected. My overall (but mind you very vague) impression of the overall research is that there are at least slightly higher rates of occurrence of overweight and obese states for those who have PKU, but that's not altogether shocking to me, given the typical prescribed diet. As to the role of phenylethylamine, none of this work specifically touches upon it, nor was I immediately able to find any other research which examines the intersection between the amine, PKU, and obesity. Hope this helps! Snow talk 01:28, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I read the following sentence and I would like to get some help to understand it: "Drugs fit receptors using the lock and key model. Covalent bonds are the strongest and the least specific.". What is the reason that the covalent bonds are least specific? 149.78.231.106 (talk) 06:14, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This wouldn't be a general statement, but just within the world of pharmaceuticals. Most drugs don't form covalent bonds with their targets, instead relying on things like van der Waals interactions. In order for a drug to form a covalent bond with the target, it needs to be more chemically reactive than most drugs. I think that is what is meant here, as they are more chemically reactive, they will be more likely to bind to non-target proteins. Fgf10 (talk) 07:51, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like this is a quiz generality. [29] The thing about generalities is that biology doesn't know theory, so they will always be wrong sometimes. Something like puromycin or carbon monoxide can be pretty specific to a particular process; you can argue that these reactions only proceed specifically because of the compounds' initial noncovalent interactions but that's a sort of No true Scotsman argument because any compound that interacts covalently with another will always have a certain degree of "noncovalent" interaction with the other reactants as part of the model for whatever reaction takes place. I suppose Fgf10's explanation is likely the reason, but I don't like the generalization. Wnt (talk) 09:34, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My iPhone does not react at all when I use the tip of my nail. But when I use the fleshy part of my finger, the iPhone reacts. 166.137.12.31 (talk) 19:16, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keratin contains very little free water or mobile ions - unlike the generous supply of both in skin - thus it's electrical conductivity is much lower. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:20, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There are several types of touch-sensitive screen: on some, a nail works well, but on others that depend on a flow of electrons, conductivity is important. Occasionally, I have to wet my finger slightly to get a screen to respond. Dbfirs 20:38, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Skin doesn't conduct. Sweat conducts. Touch screens that don't need a conductor are little produced anymore. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:14, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How big would an island need to be to have both a desert and farmland as part of its geography?184.147.124.158 (talk) 23:21, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Molokai is not very large, and has quite a variable climate. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:59, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See the right-hand image in the "See also" section of Center-pivot irrigation. It's quite possible to have productive farmland in the desert if you water it enough, so if you had a way of getting the water there, the only possible size restriction would be on the farming question: is the island big enough that farming is practical? You can't easily farm an island that's one are in size, i.e. 0.01 hectares. If you want more information, look at aerial or satellite views of the Nile; it's in a desert, but there are numerous small islands in the river, and many are farmed. Nyttend (talk) 03:42, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When you have high mountains, you can have moist land and desert just a few miles apart, because if the winds blow consistently in the same direction, the mountains can create a rain shadow. Looie496 (talk) 17:49, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I hope i'm not being disruptive by asking this question again,but what are the chances of catching the hpv virus for a man who performs oral sex on a woman? Secondly, once a man is exposed to the virus orally, what is the probability that he will develop oral cancer? I'm just rephrasing my question.199.119.235.132 (talk) 00:38, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Surely one of these articles will lead you in the right direction. That would at least be a good start on your research. You may also want to try Google Scholar, which will limit your searches to peer-reviewed research journals. --Jayron32 03:31, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You know this question is linked to the one i just asked. It's further up in the pageWhereismylunch (talk) 03:44, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What about the probability of developing oral cancer once you are exposed orally to the virus? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Whereismylunch (talk • contribs) 05:35, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Do any of them try to arrive home with as empty a tank as possible, then add enough hot diesel (with a funnel) to last until the engine/fuel system is cold again? I don't know what temperature of diesel is safe to do this with (120F? More?) or how cold this would work at but it's probably better than nothing right? Would this still work if your trip was so short that you only put a cup (quarter liter) of hot thermal mass in and the entire car is at thermal equilibrium with -25F or something? No, I don't drive or go to minus Fahrenheit places - I'm not in any personal danger from answers given here. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:13, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also I'm not sure if this would work if the trip was so long that the fuel in the tank would have enough time to cool to the filter clog point, if that would happen. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:17, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard of this method. It might keep the fuel in the tank warm longer, but the engine is where the real problem with cold lies (since the engine block is a much larger component of the total thermal mass than the fuel inside it at any given time). Glow plugs, or simply leaving the vehicle running, or at least starting it every so often, are other methods which are used in an attempt to keep engines operating in extreme cold environments. StuRat (talk) 02:26, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking of, uh, redneck-type people who won't pay for a heated garage, to tell the truth. To clarify, I hadn't thought of leaving the tank full, I meant pouring only enough at cold starts to probably not run out of gas before the next break in driving that's long enough for it to get cold. (you could always pull over and add a bit more if you added too little). This would minimize diluting the hot diesel with cold diesel. I'm assuming that it would not cool so much that it couldn't be started and the heat of a running vehicle might keep the fuel filter unclogged as long as the fuel added is not very little cause they wouldn't sell a diesel with much too high filter clog temperature for that location. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:15, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In climates where diesel is likely to freeze, block heaters are used extensively. People use them on gasoline cars as well to keep engine coolant and lubrication working as well. You'll find many people in cold climates plugging in their heaters at night when they park at home so the engine will start in the morning. --Jayron32 04:20, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly sounds safer to me than those drivers I've seen with fires under their trucks to warm them up so the engine will start! I thought they were warming up the fuel tank rather than the engine. But who am I to judge. The thing I would worry about if I was driving about where it could get very cold is that there was a way for me to stay warm for some hours or a day if the weather got so bad the road got blocked. Dmcq (talk) 09:28, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As always, Wikipedia has an article that answers these questions.Winter diesel fuel.--Aspro (talk) 23:41, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Talk:Phenethylamine#What_are_.22Low_dosages.22_of_PEA.3F_-_A_problem_with_the_second_passage_of_the_article. Regards, Ben-Natan (talk) 01:22, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

where online I can buy a faceted smoky phantom quartz pendant? The link I show is just an example but it is just clear quartz in the photo. http://www.bestamericanarts.com/Susan-Goodwin-Faceted-Quartz-Pendant Not smokey quartz. Is a green Grossular garnet and wiluite/viluite the same stone? Where online can I buy a pendant with blue vesuvianite or green Garnet in it? Thank you! Venustar84 (talk) 01:34, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your best bet may be to visit a local jeweler who can do custom work. My wife's wedding ring is custom made, and was not all that more expensive than an "off the rack" ring with a similar-sized stone and ring would have been. If you visit a good local jeweler who does custom pieces, you can commission just about anything you want; if you have a piece that you already like, but merely want a different stone it's a fairly easy thing to switch out the stones. --Jayron32 03:29, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For years, Gary's Gem Garden, 404 Marlton Pike E, Cherry Hill, NJ, ‎(856) 795-5077 ‎garysgemgarden.com had an egg-sized 500ct flawless cut smoky quartz, unset, but I would just have carried it in my pocket like an egg. (I am not sure what "phantom"specifies in the OP's question.) He does commission work depending on the materials. He can also be extremely rude to customers and staff according to personal observation and on-line reviews, but that doesn't seem to affect his work. It's where I'd go. BTW, the going price for that jewel was $1/ct. and it sold about 10 years ago. μηδείς (talk) 04:54, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What about Lake Ontario's east coast? That lake is further north where it's colder and doesn't point south of west so it should have more of a buffer before the water-warmed air rises above freezing. Lake Ontario and Michigan don't freeze much anymore because of global warming so if you made them longer they should eventually warm the Canadian air above freezing often enough to counter the extra water vapor, no? If it's near 100% humidity on the eastern shores already then maybe more length wouldn't enhance the snowfall much anyway. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:23, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You'll want to read the article on lake effect snow. It explains the process pretty well. Otherwise the Wikipedia reference desk does not engage in idle speculation. You should read the disclaimers at the top. --Jayron32 03:25, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well essentially the question is approximated by "how much distance is needed to turn a continental air mass to a maritime one?" What do you want me to do?, ask "at what point would more fetch (the term in the lake effect article) decrease snow instead of increasing it" to sound less like idle speculation? There are many variables, azimuth, latitude, the shape of the continent upwind of it, where the mountains are, how tall are them, is the upwind ocean only a few hundred miles wide?, thousands? Is that side of the equator maritime and mild like our current Southern Hemisphere? Is there even land above 45°N? (like there probably wasn't in the past)? That's too open-ended. N. American/Asian sea-effect snow doesn't even reach France or Oregon. It's a mild maritime winter. The cold is clearly snuffed out of existence. Eastern Great Lake shores are still considered to have a continental climate, though, but less cold than it would be if the lakes were land. What's in between? A meteorology buff who knew temperature, humidity, snowfall.. of the Atlantic at those latitudes could probably give an educated guess, so an answer that's not wild speculation is possible. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:53, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, someone once asked how they would do astrology on Mars when a human mission is not even planned yet and nobody complained about violating the rules on speculation. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:43, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What is the main difference between antagonist to antidote? 149.78.231.106 (talk) 05:36, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An antagonist is a character in a drama. An antidote is a treatment for a poison. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:36, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not false, but incomplete and it this case, not helpful. See Receptor antagonist (both of you ;-). An antagonist can be an antidote, but not all antidotes are antagonists, and not all antagonists are antidotes. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:38, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Can I get an example for both the options? 10:22, 3 December 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.78.231.106 (talk)

Antivenoms are examples of antidotes that work by using immune cells to break down the poisonous proteins in the venom, not by inhibiting any particular receptor. And I don't think Beta blockers are ever given as antidotes to any particular poisons. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:46, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• A drug that works as an antagonist fits in a receptor where a normal chemical would fit and produce a normal effect, yet the antagonist does not produce that effect, and competes therefore with the normal agonist. An antidote is any chemical, which by any means, counteracts a toxin (this can be broadened biologically to include vaccines and some diseases). Some toxins act by attaching to receptors, not "letting go", and providing an overstimulus, such as various nerve agents. In such a case, timely administration of an antagonist might prevent the toxin from overloading all the receptors, but that's gong to be a hugely tricky strategy based on the original dose and time of the toxin received, and the relative kinetics of the toxin-hyper-agonist and the antagonist, i.e., how long they each remain active. Finally, certain toxins are actually antagonists themselves, especially those that cause paralysis, like botox and curare. They bind to and block receptors necessary for muscle contraction, without actually allowing the muscles to contract. μηδείς (talk) 21:26, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hot chocolate usually comes in powder form. In my experience, there is always some undissolved powder at the bottom. How do I minimize or eliminate the undissolved remaining powder in order to make the perfect cup of hot chocolate? By the way, is hot cocoa a solution or colloidal suspension? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 18:09, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The first step is to make a slurry in the bottom of the cup. Add a small amount of hot water and stir that glop very vigorously. Add a bit more water and stir again, but more gently. Then fill the cup to your desired level and stir gently. That will ensure that the mix is as thoroughly incorporated as it can be, but the stuff will come out of suspension again if you let it sit. Two other quick tips: 1) make your own cocoa mix; it literally is just as easy as the pre-mix your get, but tastes better. 2) add a small amount of cayenne powder to the mix. Too much will make it bitter, but a small amount will increase the "chocolaty-ness." Matt Deres (talk) 18:36, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I find using an electric mixer is fast and produces great results. I use a single-beater handheld mixer for this.

ETA: hot chocolate is an emulsion or colloidal suspension of cocoa solids in water/milk. Mihaister (talk) 18:46, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Any ground up/roasted plant material is going to be a really complicated substance - I would be extremely surprised if 100% of it was an insoluble suspension or if 100% of it was dissolved - it's almost certainly a mix of the two. SteveBaker (talk) 19:28, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Google "perfect hot cocoa". μηδείς (talk) 03:03, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mix the cocoa and the sugar first, when dry. This makes it much easier to mix with water. (And if there are any solids left they will at least taste good, but that's not the goal.) Secondly try making hot chocolate instead of hot cocoa - use dark chocolate chips, melt them in a small pot with hot water and milk, you won't need extra sugar. Ariel. (talk) 09:08, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why do the continents become narrower as you go south? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.254.218.246 (talk) 19:41, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is no widely accepted theory. See Continental drip and the talk page for some more info. Matt Deres (talk) 19:49, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not specifically a reason, but they were all originally clumped together into Pangea. Later, they separated into Gondwana and Laurasia. The articles have some pictures that show how the tapered portions lined up long ago. So one explanation is that that's the way the cookie crumbled [30]. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:02, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, it seems like the majority of this "drip" is the three-way split from one end of Gondwana, with South America, the tip of Africa, and the Antarctic Peninsula all converging to a single point. (of course, the Peninsula now faces north, which makes it the 'exception that proves the rule' so to speak) Apparently this point is part of where Gondwana came together 550 million years ago, and the site of breakup from 180-110 million years ago. Whether coincidentally or not, the tip of Florida and the tip of India are sort of lined up toward that central point. So it seems like a genuine and interesting question. The article draws a connection of the separation of India with the Réunion hotspot and Deccan Traps, but that was considerably later than the original three-way split. I wonder where that hotspot was 130 MYA and whether it had anything to do with the breakup... a pity I know so little about this! Wnt (talk) 22:25, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Things that expand or contact often break open into three. Four is too much, two is too few. Most arid cracked earth cracks into shapes with three lines meeting don't they? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 06:24, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Sagittarian Milky Way: I don't know about "most", but Patterned ground and Mud Cracks can indeed have degree 4 vertices, and it's at least not very rare if not exactly common. Some pictures in our articles show this and you can find many more on google images, including rectangles, hexagons, and other irregular patterns including lots of degree 4. I do agree that 5 and higher is fairly rare, but it could be achieved in a suffficiently controlled experiment. This all depends on the granularity of the substance, the moisture, the thickness, and how fast it dries. I highly recommend anyone with an interest to mix up a few trays of mud and see the different types of pattern that can develop. You can also read up on the surprisingly sophisticated math necessary to understand the pattern formation, e.g. here [31]. A more empirical approach is given here [32], and a more applied approach here [33]. The pattern formation processes are much stronger on the scales of mud cracking than they are for continental breakup, but I'm not really sure why. Also the driving forces (hots spots vs. dessication or freeze/thaw) are rather different. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:07, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So I was not too right, but I think I read that new mid-oceanic ridges always form when the crust expands (of course it doesn't literally expand but separates and New stuff is added to the space) and breaks into three. This shape does occur at the Sinai Peninsula and again at Djibouti (African Rift Valley meets the Arabian plate). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:09, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

SemanticMantis made a really interesting response on the mud cracks, but... I'm not sure that's what went on here (if anything at all special went on). The edge of Gondwanaland was more or less a straight line, and our map in the article has it marked as a major fault line, and things broke apart three ways from a point on the edge. For all I know (i.e. nothing) the continent might have hit something that "pushed into it" and broke it apart (maybe that hotspot?) but alas, I don't know this at all; hell, I don't even know which way it was moving at the time. I can only say that so far from what's said here I don't have any more reason to think it is like mud cracks than that. :) Hmmmm... actually I found something like this suggestion just now in Great Escarpment, Southern Africa; alas it cites an offline source that sounds a little pop science, but hopefully there's some fire to go with that smoke... Wnt (talk) 18:06, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I just like mud cracks and wanted to share some info but I'm not convinced the processes behind their patterns will tell us much about continental break up. Does anyone remember the name of our contributor that is a real geologist? Mark or Mike something maybe? Ah it's @Mikenorton: - I for one would like to hear his thoughts on this topic. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:06, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, here it is, triple junction. Note that there is no link in that article to quadruple junction. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:00, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, Medeis said that any dripping continents are likely to point towards the Sun from most of the civilizations. Neil Diamond would probably say that low temperate acreage continents (therefore narrow and N-S oriented and/or pointy and/or not extending into much of the temperature zone at all), and disease-ridden low latitude areas are not conducive to civilizations, making the further pole likely "up" on maps, thus increasing the chance that sentient globalized civilizations have continental drip. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:28, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The assumption does not apply to Australia, Eurasia (or Europe and Asia) or Antarctica. Beyond that it's what called historical accident. (For example, if you flip seven coins, a majority of them will point in some direction or other, regardless of whether they are quarters or dimes.) There's nothing about continents essentially that makes them have to have their pointy bits face one way or the other. One might also adduce the fact that most of the worlds major civilizations originated in the half of the globe that has the most land, and that the smaller parts lie on the other side of the equator, and therefore in the direction of the sun so far as the Northerners are concerned. μηδείς (talk) 21:15, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, I don't think we can say with any certainty at this point whether it is a historical accident -- that is, just one of any number of possible combinations the landmasses might have taken on a planet with similar conditions, each of which was more or less equally likely -- or not. At present the answer "this is just the manner in which tectonic and other geological pressures happened to drive continental drift and the overall morphology of the continents" might have to suffice, but further study might reveal that principles of entropy and/or other physical constraints tend to result in landmasses with a tapered shape. We are extremely limited in the assumptions we can make here, owing to the facts that A) we've really only studied these phenomena in significant detail on one planet, B) many of the forces at work are of an extremely complex nature and difficult to directly examine, and C) the scale of geological time is such that we've only been making direct, contemporaneous observations of the relevant phenomena during an exceedingly tiny portion of the time over which they have developed. All of which is not to say that the models upon which modern geology is based don't seem to be quite stable and reliable, but rather that it will be a long time, I think, before researchers can fully appreciate just how much we don't know at this point. Snow talk 01:48, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine, I am sure you simply don't understand what is meant by accident in the linked article, so worry not. μηδείς (talk) 03:00, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm quite familiar with the use of the term in that context, thank you very much, Medeis. If you would care to be more specific in where you find my reasoning and representation of the facts as regard the relevant areas of science to be flawed -- as opposed to lobbing pointed, frankly passive-aggressive comments that serve no purpose other than to a personalize a discussion that is not well served by a such a change in tone, when no personal insult or judgement was implied on my part -- well then, I'll be all ears. As I see it, you were suggesting that the morphology of terrestrial continents, or at least their orientation with regard to the poles when they are tapered, is largely, or purely, the result of random chance, with little or nothing in terms of physical forces which would predispose them to particular shapes or orientations -- your coin analogy in particular leaves very little doubt in my mind, at least, that this was your position. I was simply pointing out that nothing in our current understanding of geophysics proves this position to be true or even likely. If you have a source which demonstrates otherwise, I'd be happy to eat some crow in exchange for seeing it, but failing that, your response was clearly speculative, and I was simply trying to clarify the matter some for the OP. Personally, I don't feel the Ref Desks are the appropriate place for a contributor who can't have their assumptions questioned without responding with irritable, acerbic comments of the "Well, I'm sure you're just ignorant -- that's alright, don't worry about it." variety. For that matter, I'm fairly certain we have a policy suggesting it's not appropriate to Wikipedia in general.... Snow talk 05:16, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm actually tempted to agree with Medeis that this is an accident of history, and that it could have come out quite differently -- but I agree with you that we surely can't assert that with any certainty. Also ol' Medsy is known to be sporadically rude and irritable here so I suggest you ignore that like many of us have learned to do :) SemanticMantis (talk) 19:06, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Again, there's no essential connection between the forces that form continents in general, and the historical accident that South Africa, the cono del sur, and Central America all narrow more or less acutely in a direction we call towards the south. No doubt if Alaska pointed south we'd also say the Aleutian peninsula showed NA narrowed to the south. This is exactly like flipping coins; of course there are preceding forces that determine their fall, but there's no essential connection between the nature of a (fair) coin and which way it happens to land in any single toss. That's the whole idea of tossing coins. Likewise some clouds look like weasels. But there's nothing inherent to the nature of clouds as a such, no natural selection of clouds, no divine preference for weasel shaped clouds, that will explain in a lawlike fashion, why this particular cloud happened to look like a weasel. If you disagree, and think there is some principle other than random initial conditions that cause continents to become pointy to the south, such that a survey of Earth-like planets will show there's some cause for south pointy continents, you can provide it. μηδείς (talk) 16:54, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You can assert that the phenomenon is purely random chance all you like but you certainly can't prove it. Some people might have though mud cracks were purely random but if you look into my links above you'll see that is not the case. Same for snow flakes - it's reasonable to think that their shapes are just random but we know now where they symmetry comes from. There are wide classes of patterns in emergent phenomena that have recently been described in terms of first principles. Patterns can have aspects of chance as well as regularity imparted by interactions in the underlying physical processes. In many situations, our understanding of the pattern formation process is refined enough that we can predict qualities of the resulting pattern ahead of time. Again, you can believe what you like, and I actually agree with your intuition in this case -- but let's not dress up guesses as scientific fact. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:06, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Medeis, if you think that Antarctica doesn't narrow rapidly to a point in the south, you've not been looking at the right projections. -- ToE 04:06, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'd never seen those particular projections before. μηδείς (talk) 16:57, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

what does this chip do? it says in the datasheet, inter alia: "The KA567 is [a] monolithic phase locked loop system designed to provide a saturated transistor switch to GND, when an input signal is present within the passband. External components are used to independently set [the] center frequency bandwidth and output delay." as far as I understand the the chip doesn't decode FM (ie smooth frequency->voltage conversion) or anything. Under the given application scenarios ("Touch Tone decoder, Wireless intercom," etc), what is the advantage of using PLL, i.e. why wouldn't a simple band-pass filter (active if needs be) plus comparator do? Asmrulz (talk) 20:57, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This circuit is a signal-detector. You could call it a frequency discriminator, but the application data-sheet calls it a "frequency-selective tone decoder system." Its purpose was very probably for use in a touch-tone telephone, as part of a larger digital system (very probably implementing dual-tone multi-frequency signaling or a similar protocol). By itself, this ASIC does not do very much: it sets a binary output to "high" or "low" when the input sees a signal with certain specific properties.

One of the things to know about ASICs is that they are application-specific. They were designed by an engineering team for one specific application. They might sometimes be useful for other purposes, but they are tuned to meet the needs and requirements of (usually) one product or one customer. This chip, in particular, is almost twenty years old; it's almost certainly been superseded by more elaborate, more tightly-integrated circuits that implement the entirety of a touch-tone telephone's logic on a single chip, almost certainly using a microcontroller or software-programmable device. One does not commonly find new touch-tone telephones, let alone new circuit-designs for such devices; so it will be difficult to find up-to-date documentation or application notes for these types of circuit hardware.

The advantage of using a PLL, in this case, is that one single ASIC can be used to detect many different types of signals, i.e. to configure this chip to detect one of many different, selectable frequencies. It is easier to change the input configuration using a PLL than by using an analog, discrete-component bandpass filter. (Why is this easier? Well, ... try to build yourself a tuning circuit using any of your favorite methods. If you want to change the values of an RLC filter, you either need to use a varactor, or a potentiometer, or tunable capacitor. All of these choices are physically bulky, hard to build to precise tolerance; hard to control electrically; full of terrible parasitics! If you replace any of those components with an electronically-controlled solid-state version, you have effectively built a phase-locked loop; so you might as well use a proper circuit designed for use as a PLL).

Nimur (talk) 21:29, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

but the chip needs extrenal components, too... "f₀ is the free-running frequency of the C_L controlled oscillator with no input signal. [It] is determined by resistor R₁ between pins 5 and 6 and capacitor C₁ from pin 6 to ground"...

I just noticed it also says there, under 2) : "The voltage at pin 2, the phase detector output, is a linear function of frequency over the range 0.95 to 1.05 f₀, with a slope of approximately 20mV/% frequency deviation." Does this mean the chip can decode FM after all? (sorry for the "disinformation" in my initial post) Asmrulz (talk) 22:35, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

can a low- or a high-pass actually decode FM? if it's not too steep and the carrier frequency is somewhere halfway between the upper and lower end of either edge on the curve? Asmrulz (talk) 22:46, 3 December 2014 (UTC) [reply]

found the answer here. it can and it's called "slope detection" Asmrulz (talk) 09:17, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, google for "567 intercom", there are reference circuits also for intercoms in some manufacturers data sheets. The device is produced by several semiconductor vendors, see NE567, LM567. Before using this, ensure your circuit is compliant to the EMI emission regulations. Check the maximum operation frequency of your sample's datasheet.--Hans Haase (talk) 09:51, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

er... I'm not making a wireless intercom... or anything that radiates away radio frequency (at least, intentionally:) ). But thank you all the same, I've bingoogled up the datasheet Asmrulz (talk) 16:41, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to convert how much thiamethoxam (in ppm) is applied to one kernel of corn, but my estimates vary largely and I'm not sure which is correct, if any. [34] (p. 11 and 12) states not to allow more than "0.21 lb thiamethoxam per acre", with 75,000 kernels per acre assumed. 0.21 ÷ 75,000 = 0.0000028 lbs per kernel, 0.0000028 lbs to ounces equals 0.0000448. A corn kernel weighs 0.000697983522 lbs. Thus 0.0000448 ounces thiamethoxam to 0.000697983522 lbs corn, which equals 0.0641848963 ounces/pound. Using [35], 0.0641848963 ounces/pound equals 4011.556019 ppm (which seems really very high, especially when an experiment found mortality rates to be high for certain species at 4 ppm / kernel). Is this correct? How would I calculate Syngenta's recommended ppm / kernel? Seattle (talk) 21:47, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You are assuming a cropping yield of 52 lb per acre. that is 0.000697983522*75000. I don't believe it.Greglocock (talk) 23:53, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

75,000 would be the number of seed kernels planted per acre, not the number harvested at the end. Thiamethoxam is generally used to protect seeds / seedlings at planting. Dragons flight (talk) 00:33, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is it? 140.254.136.160 (talk) 22:00, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The most straightforward way to evaluate risks like this in a hurry is to look at the NFPA code in the article infobox and hopefully on the chemical bottle. There is much to be said for practical and empirical experience versus chemical theory where your skin is concerned! If you mouseover the blue "1" it says it can be irritating but not exceptionally damaging. It's interesting to compare this with acetic acid, found in vinegar, which has a rating of 3, even though acetic acid has a pKa of 4.7 whereas ascorbic acid has a lower pKa of 4.1. My assumption ...... might be wrong ..... is that this has to do mainly with the fact that acetic acid is a very small molecule so you can get it very concentrated, since it's only the concentrated solution that gets the "3", not vinegar. Ascorbic acid, being bigger (176 vs 60) and also less soluble in water (330 vs essentially 1049 g/l), can't really reach the same concentration at your skin. Wnt (talk) 22:35, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How does the said body treat heat-resistant pathogenic bacteria? If fever is the body's response to foreign microbial invasion, then what happens if the bacteria is heat-resistant but the body's own cells and enzymes start to denature due to the excess heat? Are there other mechanisms that the multicellular, eukaryotic body can use to defeat foreigners? 140.254.136.160 (talk) 22:09, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fever has a wide range of effects, such as on the body's own immune cells, and isn't simply an attempt to cook the invading organism. Look over the article and ask again if you have more specific questions. Wnt (talk) 22:38, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely -- immune response is a fabulously complex process and most every eukaryote has a wide arsenal of mechanisms which can be utilized in response to pathogens; pyrexia is not even really the first or most significant line of defense and, as Wnt has already noted, its utility is believed to be more about augmenting other aspects of the immune response than directly damaging or inhibiting the pathogen in question -- generally speaking anyway. A good first stop for the info you seek is Immune system (peculiarly, we don't have an entry specifically on the human immune system as we do for a lot of other physiological systems, but you're request seemed more broad in any event). I'm happy to say we have a pretty decent selection of fairly robust articles on immunology at present, but given the focus of your question, I would start with Leukocyte, Lymphocyte, T cell, B cell, NK cell, Macrophage, Antigen, and complement system. Snow talk 22:50, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are there obstacles to making wine industrially by mixing calibrated amounts of purified water, food-grade ethanol, and flavorings, much like how soda and energy drinks are produced? --173.49.79.100 (talk) 06:27, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The obstacle is the complexity of the flavourings, and aromatic compounds, and colours, and aging characteristics.... HiLo48 (talk) 06:33, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There would also undoubtedly be legal problems - European legislation for example defines wine as "The product obtained exclusively from the total or partial alcoholic fermentation of fresh grapes, whether or not crushed, or of grape must". [36] While a mixture of "purified water, food-grade ethanol, and flavorings" might theoretically be indistinguishable from wine, it couldn't be sold as such. AndyTheGrump (talk) 08:28, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes but aside from that it is still a good question. Could you make a drink that approximates the taste of reasonable wine, starting from a base mix of ethanol and water? If you think about it gin is pretty much ethanol+water+flavorings, is it a big stretch to imagine making wine in the same fashion? My immediate answer is that grapes are a cheap source of ethanol, and you get the rest thrown in, but if you allow yourself oak chips and so on even modern wines are fairly manufactured product. Have you tasted the oaky stuff they blend into a pinot noir? Greglocock (talk) 09:12, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OP here. Thanks. The feasibility of approximating the taste of real wine well enough is really what the question is about. When I asked the question, I was assuming that chemists might have a way to make the flavorings relatively cheaply. Note that besides potentially being cheaper to make, "wine" made that way is potentially more easily made consistent across batches. --173.49.11.192 (talk) 13:12, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting question. When making this simulated wine product ("Whyne"?) how close to the original – or an original – version of the product is required? I mean, look at the candy aisle or the soda cooler at the grocery store. One will find lots of products which are putatively "orange"- or "cherry"- or "lemon"-flavored. These approximations are often readily identifiable as intentional imitations of their nominal, natural originals. Nevertheless, in most cases one is never remotely fooled that the snack or beverage is actually the original and not an imitation.

So, does our Whyne need to reach a level where it could be mistaken for actual wine? Or can Whyne simply be an (obviously-)artificial mixture that happens to more closely resemble wine than it does most other liquid beverage products? (And then there's the question of how good a wine we need our Whyne to imitate. I mean, there are some low-quality, low-cost jugs of plonk that already taste like barely-potable imitations.) Or does it just have to have enough grape-y booziness to work as a substitute for wine in a wine cooler or other mixed drink? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:37, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It certainly seems like it should be possible. That said, I don't know that that's really a safe assumption you're making. How much synthetic wine costs would, as TenOfAllTrades suggests, likely depend on how closely you approximate the real flavor, color, and aroma. You might be able to replicate all the major flavor compounds cheaply, but to get all of them might require dozens, if not hundreds, of chemicals added in extremely precise amounts. See the wine chemistry article and the articles linked from there for an idea of the complexity. [37] describes over 50 different compounds that can affect the aroma of Chardonnay, some in concentrations as low as a few hundred parts per quadrillion.

It would depend on how the flavor compounds are produced industrially. If they have to be extracted from fruit, it would almost certainly be cheaper to just mash the grapes up and do it the old fashioned way rather than chemically separating and recombining all the components in a lab. Wine isn't actually that expensive to make. Some wines can cost a lot in the store because they're produced in small quantities (supply and demand), they have to be shipped halfway around the world in heavy glass bottles, and people associate price with quality. A wine that retails for $100 might only cost the winery $15 to make, and that includes the cost of the bottle itself. The rest is shipping, marketing, and profit for the winery, distributor, and retail store. Mr.Z-man 15:47, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There used to be powdered wine (see e.g. this German review), especially marketed to trekking enthusiasts. It's made with alcohol powder and red wine extracts, and apparently is about as appetising as that sounds ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:15, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• The answer to "why don't they" questions like this is almost always cost vs quality. For example, one could, in principle, synthesize all the sugars, fats, and protein in milk in a laboratory. But It's cheaper to get it from a cow. You can mix grape juice and vodka and get a pretty poor substitute for wine. The cheapest way to do it well is probably to age fermented grape juice. Look at butter and sugar. For health reasons, some use expensive and otherwise inferior substitutes. But the real thing remains. μηδείς (talk) 16:25, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. You could also ask "Why would they?" when we still have a wine lake needing to be drunk. "Hundreds of millions of bottles of wine are turned into industrial alcohol every year" according to our article. Alansplodge (talk) 16:32, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Now that's a crying shame. But why distill wine or even (God forbid) uproot vineyards when some countries ought to just pass the hat and make wine and/or bulk grape juice a common relief supply for areas struck by war and famine? (Yeah, I know why, I just can't believe it) Wnt (talk) 16:52, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why distill wine? Because Brandy. --Jayron32 18:32, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, I suspect this is an issue of discrimination rather than science. Anything done by the rich is noble, but if done by the poor it is evil and dangerous, and tippling is no exception. Things like gin and malt liquor have been the object of great crusades. It's not hard to find things like this today. (It's not just wine - you need merely watch a program like Sons of Guns to see rich white folk playing with machine guns and grenade launchers, while being in a black neighborhood with a gun usually means five years in prison. The FAA is gradually mulling over how to make it so that it's legal for a company to hover outside your window taping you but any attempt by you to do that to them would land you in jail for years.) As an industry I would expect vintners to recognize that any innovation that reduces prices is a mortal peril, not merely because it is a race to the bottom as the nearly fixed consumption of cheap booze generates less profit, but because it invites new prohibitions that potentially affect all their products. Wnt (talk) 17:02, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Does Wikipedia have anything on the projects being funded by the UK for practical applications of quantum technology described at [38]? Some of these (quantum encryption) seem familiar enough, basically using action at a distance to transmit/share a one-time pad in a secure (?) way. But using 'spooky' quantum effects to see through smoke or detect sinkholes by the lack of gravity? That I'm not so familiar with! Wnt (talk) 08:11, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We have a short article at Quantum sensor, which links to Quantum imaging and Quantum metrology. Mr.Z-man 18:11, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

After cooking, will the hormones still be active or will they denature? Let's assume that the meat is poultry, pork, beef, fish or shellfish. 140.254.245.237 (talk) 17:59, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Folks have been eating Rocky Mountain oysters for a long time, with no apparent problems. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:10, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

for the people or the sheep? --Jayron32 18:22, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think some effects are possible from raw glands. For example there seems to be a large market in thyroid capsules made from raw/desiccated beef thyroid - here's some associated discussion [39] - I haven't looked up the heat stability of triiodothyronine and thyroxine to say what cooking would do to them, so I don't know if it reduces the activity just a little or completely. There are similar hits for adrenal capsules. In general this is biology - if you do something nobody else does, you may get a result nobody else has seen before; I don't think you should assume that eating unlimited amounts of very specific meat organs would be without effect. Wnt (talk) 18:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to Wnt for actually answering the question rather than just joking around. This is Reference Desk, not a chat room. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:44, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not all of the jokes are that offal, are they? --Jayron32 20:13, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I often wonder why some are keen to compare this place to a realistic help desk. While I'm certain you make massive contributions to the mainspace of Wikipedia, several others don't. What are the purposes of the various responses to this question? Self-aggrandising and a definite of "love me because I'm funny/clever/satirical, although I have nothing encyclopaedic to add, I'll add something jocular yet hopeless" feeling. Terribly sad, not part of the encyclopedia. Time to improve this. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:28, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See here and also here. Count Iblis (talk) 20:21, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is it through their mouths like other animals? Besides the ones that get water from their food, how do they get it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Radioactivemutant (talk • contribs) 18:53, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Let's say I let a compressed gas expand. If the process is isentropic, the relationship between its temperature before expansion, and its temperature after expansion is related to its heat capacity ratio. The precise relationship is:

T1 = T2(p2/p1)^1/1-g 

Where g is the heat capacity ratio. How do I do this calculation if the process is not completely isentropic, but has an isentropic efficiency of say, 80%?--Goose Geyser (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]