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December 21

Vitiligo

In reference to the condition Vitiligo. My understanding is that it effects the pigmentation of the skin. Does this differ by race? More specifically, would the affected skin of a Caucasian person turn black, while that of an African American turn whiter?

Thank you for your assistance. I am new to Wikipedia and I hope that I am using this forum correctly.

David L Boca Raton, Florida — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.10.176.177 (talk) 04:03, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

See our article Vitiligo. The condition is a partial lack of pigmentation. As such it results in a lightening of the skin. The article contains pictures of both black and white sufferers. Rojomoke (talk) 05:48, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

But note that the lighter the rest of the skin, the less noticeable it will be. StuRat (talk) 08:07, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Does libration cause tidal effects ?

...such as tides in liquid, and tidal heating in rock ? StuRat (talk) 08:06, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

To use the terminology exactly: gravity is a first order effect; tides are a second order effect; any additional complication is a third-order effect at best. We use these terms precisely in physics to mean the size of the effect is an order of magnitude smaller - usually as an exponent in a polynomial expansion of the governing equation. In the case of the equation for the tidal force, we're specifically referring to the polynomial exponent on the radial distance between the two objects. After a certain point - usually, the third order - we're talking about very tiny perturbations. It would be nonsense to deny that such effects exist, but for nearly any practical purpose, your calculation cannot be made accurate enough for these effects to matter. For example even if you were flying a spacecraft to the moon, you would not use these perturbations as part of your gravity model to calculate spacecraft trajectory. You would instead probably use a gravity anomaly map, because effects of the nonhomogeneous large-scale mineral distribution inside Earth has a much more significant effect on the spacecraft orbit. Alternately, you might just use a specialized RADAR to navigate by way of closed-loop feedback control systems, as Project Apollo did. In other words, engineering considerations trump the pure physics - which is so commonplace in so many problem-domains that physicists have specific terminology to refer to "dropping the higher order effects."

Put another way: do you have a use-case where you are able to (or need to) accurately calculate the gravitational anomaly of the Earth-Moon system with sufficient precision that you can actually account for these perturbations in the Earth-Moon distance? Our computers are great and powerful; our equations can be made arbitrarily complex; but why should we do these calculations, except for the fun of them? And if you enjoy recreational mathematics - as many of us do - then maybe you would agree that high-order expansions of the n-body problem are less fun than other, more interesting areas of pure or applied mathematics?

Here is a free, web-based treatment of libration, without complicated equations, from NASA Goddard: Librations of the Moon. I don't have either of the books referenced by that website; but I do have many others; in Moon, (Wilkins and Moore, 1955) uses one significant figure only in describing the libration; and he bases his discussion of the librated areas surface on the 300 inch map. Point is, you're using false precision if you think you can calculate better than the most accurate studies ever made by Earth-based observers.

Here is A numerically integrated ephemeris of the moon and planets spanning forty-four centuries (1983), with full text available. In this paper, the authors (from JPL) discuss tidal deformations. They also show that their numerical error with respect to lunar range is about one meter in ten years - so their math worked great when compared against Apollo lunar laser ranging data over the ... ten years that it had been available.

Nimur (talk) 16:53, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

So you're essentially saying 'yes, libration of the moon influences tidal effects, but the impact is negligible for even very high precision applied engineering problems in space flight.' Is that right? SemanticMantis (talk) 17:56, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Libration is an effect - it is a symptom of the imperfections of the simplistic model of the orbit as observed on Earth. These extra complications to model that effect are of negligible importance for most high-precision astrophysical tasks. For example, if you wanted to write an equation to calculate the differential tidal force due to the diurnal libration (in other words, the error in the tidal force equation caused by the rotation of the Earth) - that effect would be very small. The tidal force equation already accounts for the fact that Earth is not a point-particle; so you'd essentially be looking for the additional effect due to the fact that it is a non-point-particle whose axis of rotation is not identically parallel to the lunar orbital plane. The effect would be tiny, and the equation to model it would be significantly more awful than the standard form of the tidal force equation (which itself is already an approximation, using a truncated expansion of a higher-order equation). Nimur (talk) 18:25, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

So... 'Yes' is your answer to my question of clarification? SemanticMantis (talk) 19:23, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not trying to be obtuse; I want to answer you correctly, and a "yes/no" is not a great way to answer the question correctly. To directly answer your query, "is that right?" - I think I have to respond "no, that is not right." Perhaps I have not clearly explained my case.

Libration is not a cause of anything: it is a visible effect of the orbit. That effect is basically broken in to three sub-effects superimposed on top of each other (as explained in our article):

• longitudinal libration: this is an effect of the elliptical (rather than circular) orbit of the moon. The radial distance to the moon does affect the tidal force; the elliptical orbit causes a different radial distance. I would not phrase this to say libration causes tidal variation. Rather, I would say elliptical orbits cause visible effects, including a small contribution to the visible libration of the Moon. The difference in strength of tides between perigee and apogee is described in our main tide article, §lunar altitude; however, this effect is less relevant than the effect of the solar tide (§springs and neaps). The effect is also significantly less relevant than geographical resonances. In other words, if you want to account for this orbital effect, you must already be accounting for many other more significant non-orbital effects.
• latitudinal libration: this effect is due to the inclination of Moon's axis of rotation with respect to the plane of its orbit. It does not meaningfully change the strength of the tidal force, because the moon is a near-perfect sphere. Obviously, you can try to be more accurate, and model this effect; but it's pretty darned negligible.
• diurnal libration: this effect is one of parallax as you (riding on the surface of the Earth) move your position over the course of the day. This changes the tidal force you experience (because you are moving); but it doesn't change the equation that governs the tidal force in any meaningful way. But - because Earth is an imperfect sphere, and because our planet's rotation is not exactly mathematically purely perfectly at a constant angular velocity, there are minuscule perturbations related to this component of the motion. These effects are probably negligible.

Because the total libration is a superposition of these three different effects, and two of them have essentially no contribution to tidal force (per application of the standard equation), I think it is not generally accurate to say that lunar libration has a correspondence to lunar tides. In any of the books I pulled off my shelf to review, or in any of the websites I checked, libration is not discussed with any relation to the tides (these effects are always discussed as conceptually distinct things).

My thesis, then, can be paraphrased: libration is caused by an orbital complexity, and the effect of that complexity on the tides is negligible. Nimur (talk) 20:10, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

@StuRat: There's such a thing as a "perigean spring tide" that is a few inches greater, which occurs when the Moon is closest to Earth and also aligns with the Sun. [1] Since the libration of the Moon and its orbital eccentricity are deeply linked, perhaps this is a relevant answer. Wnt (talk) 22:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Let me clarify the Q

I didn't mean to ask specifically about the Earth-Moon system, or specifically about spacecraft navigation. More generally, can a dual system where both bodies are approximately tidally locked to each other, but still undergo libration with respect to one another, undergo tidal effects such as such as tides in liquid, and tidal heating in rock ? (And here I mean tides created by the two bodies, not additional external bodies.) StuRat (talk) 20:51, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

There is always a tidal force between two bodies: it corresponds to the difference in the amount of gravitational attraction toward one body (say the Moon) experienced by different points on the other (say the Earth). Effects such as the tidal movement of the ocean, and tidal heating in rock, are caused by the change in tidal force over time. As mentioned above, third-order effects. The tidal force depends on the distance and direction of the other body (a vector). So if one body is librating then it will feel dynamic tidal effects due to the direction changing, even if the orbit is circular. If the orbit is not circular, that alone will cause some tidal effects in both bodies because the distance is changing. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 02:05, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

This sounds like a correct answer to me. If two bodies are mutually tidally locked and orbiting one another, they can still have eccentric orbits that bring them nearer and further to one another, and necessarily introducing libration to their relative orientation. As you can imagine though, the change of tidal force during a full rotation will be greater than if it shifts by ten degrees or by a few percent of its value. Even if the two planets joust past one another in a high eccentricity orbit, they still will have the same maximum tidal force as if they were in a tight circular orbit while at their closest approach in the same position; and it will still reduce to the same nothing at the furthest remove that it would be if it were simply rotated 90 degrees. I think... Wnt (talk) 22:48, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

force != energy (God grief - I wish I had a dollar ever time that confusion occurs). A static force (of any kind) does not cause a transfer of energy. So if two bodies are tidally locked, there is a tidal force - but no energy transfer - and hence no tidal heating. Only if there is some relative motion between the two bodies does the force change over time and result in a transfer of energy from orbital/rotational energy into repeated deformation of one of both of the two bodies, which in turn would turn into heat as a result of frictional forces.

Libration is a kinda vague term - our article about it describes several different modes of libration. However, at it's heart, it refers to relative motion between two bodies. If they are both tidally locked - then relative rotation is not present - but they could still vary in relative distances due to an elliptical orbit...and that would cause varying tidal forces and heating of one or both bodies. However, a highly elliptical orbit would screw up tidal locking because the speed of the orbiting body would vary throughout the orbit and the other body would not be fully tidally locked. So I think that true tidal locking requires circular orbits...but I could be wrong about that. In the specific case of our moon, the orbit isn't perfectly circular - and the moon's tidal locking isn't perfect either - it wobbles from side to side by a small amount.

• So our moon does feel tidal forces from the Earth.
• And because it has libration (it still wobbles and traverses a slightly non-circular orbit), those forces vary slightly.
• And because of that, the moon does experience some tidal heating.
• But, those effects are tiny because the libration is quite small and the tidal lock is pretty close to perfect.

IMHO, if there is libration, then there isn't perfect tidal locking...by definition.

SteveBaker (talk) 17:20, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

So then what term is used to describe a moon that "wobbles", but never completes a complete rotation WRT it's planet, if it's not "tidally locked" ? StuRat (talk) 17:53, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

What is the reverse of being tidaly locked?

What is the reverse of being tidaly locked?201.79.58.12 (talk) 15:44, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Not being tidally locked. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:04, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Asynchronous rotation? Some scientific magazines use this term at least: [2] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jubilujj 2015 (talk • contribs) 19:43, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

What do you mean by "reverse"? —Tamfang (talk) 10:36, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The other extreme. 201.79.50.148 (talk) 18:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

How would you describe that "other extreme"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:31, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• Well, the OP can look at tidal locking, and orbital resonance. There's the simnple case of the Earth and the sun where there is no tidal locking, but there is a pretty linear but non-whole-number relationship between the length of our day and year, and there is the chaos of the moons of the Pluto-Charon system which leaves the four moons, Nix, Styx, Kerberos and Hydra tumbling, with no predictable period. The OP might also want to look at the difference between logical contraries and opposites. μηδείς (talk) 19:47, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

DC railway traction power supply

Why are DC railway power systems generally not earthed whilst AC is? 2A02:C7D:B91D:8000:19ED:D547:32C:A37E (talk) 16:29, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

See Railway electrification system, but I'm not sure what you mean by "earthed". There are plenty of DC systems that use a single feed conductor (catenary or third rail) with the traction current return through the track. Tevildo (talk) 19:45, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

"Earthed" is just British usage for "grounded". When the return current is through the track, the issue is whether the railway allows it to leak into the ground or attempts to keep the track electrically isolated from the ground. One issue that's specific to non-isolated DC is galvanic corrosion; I don't know if that's a sufficient answer to the question. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 02:09, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Engineering asset management to operational management

How easy is it to move from a job in engineering asset management and project management within a public service to operational Management of a public service whether it's an ambulance service or a railroad network or a highway network? 2A02:C7D:B91D:8000:19ED:D547:32C:A37E (talk) 17:10, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Garnier's new "micellar technology" in their makeup remover / facial cleanser

Can someone tell me what is exactly "new" or novel about Garnier's new "micellar water"? [3] I saw it as an ad for Youtube and I was so confused. Don't normal surfactants and detergents already form micelles? What is really going on here? Are they modifying the micelle-forming behavior of surfactants, perhaps making the micelles smaller or controlling their surface tension or making the surfactants branched or perhaps optimizing the ionic strength of the solution? I am so puzzled, especially in the way their ad targets women. Yanping Nora Soong (talk) 18:11, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

"Micellar water" is a rather recent marketing gimmick. It isn't just Garnier. There are many companies passing off water with a little soap as "micellar water" and reaping the profits. Soon, one of them will be smart enough to say they've removed the water and replaced it with dihydrogen monoxide for an even deeper cleansing experience. 209.149.113.52 (talk) 18:32, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

How did humans cope with pain before widespread opiate use?

Hi all. So I read an article about a failed attempt to strongly regulate Rx's of certain oft-abused opioids - Percocet, Vicodin, Oxycontin: http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Effort-to-cut-painkiller-prescriptions-falters-6710218.php. Then I go and look up when all of these were introduced to the market and found that Vicodin was introduced in 1984, Oxycontin in 1995, and Percocet in 1999. The news article suggests a powerful pharmaceutical lobby that discourages any new mandates on prescription practices revolving around these drugs. But the fact is, many people die from these drugs every year.

So, my question is, were humans just basically miserable before the introduction of mainstream opiate drugs? I know there was heroin, morphine, etc, but they were most likely used at a much lesser level than the prescription drugs we have now. Are users of these drugs so weak-minded as compared to those who survived without them for so many years? Why is there SUCH a demand and necessity for these that seemed less significant 30-50-80 years ago? Can't these people be happy with other drugs such as ibuprofen, acetaminophen, or etodolac?

Thanks for any and all insight. Justin15w (talk) 19:36, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Opium has been in use for (among other things) pain relief, for thousands of years. Contact Basemetal here 19:40, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

In times gone by before the hysteria about the war on drugs etc if you were in chronic pain you'd have a syringe and a prescription for morphine. I suppose the other thing is that we now live longer so more, affluent, people are running into chronic pain. And I'll be honest, morphine for breakfast isn't as much fun as it sounds. Greglocock (talk) 19:54, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Heroin, a morphine derivative first synthesized in 1874, was marketed by Bayer as a "non-addictive" substitute for morphine. Bayer, its fortunes based on aspirin and heroin, could be considered largely an analgesia company. Of course, they were later involved with another more infamous compound. - Nunh-huh 22:43, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Also, pain is relative. If you never feel any, then when you get a splinter you feel like you are going to die. But if you are in constant pain, you get used to it, even without meds. For example, I have back pain so severe I could barely get out of bed this morning, but I don't take powerful pain killers, as the risks outweigh the benefits, IMHO. (For example, the pain keeps me from doing stupid things which would further injure my back, like lifting heavy objects.) StuRat (talk) 20:41, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, having been on a morphine drip for six months due to an almost fatal abdominal illness and all the surgical procedures related to it, whenever I am asked by a doctor, "On a scale from one to ten, ten being the worst, how does your broken bone feel?" I respond "one". μηδείς (talk) 21:53, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Let us hope the question does not arise often! - Nunh-huh 22:43, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. There was the time when I slipped on black ice and broke my left radius, and had to drive myself 15 miles at 1am to the hospital. I got to the admissions desk, put my arm on the counter, said I had broken my arm (you could see the bone just under the skin) and was told that my amateur opinion was unwelcome, and that "We are the professionals, and we will determine whether your arm is broken." μηδείς (talk) 02:07, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Good to know you got the customary customer service :) - Nunh-huh 05:34, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I guess the appropriate answer is "1. How do you know I am not a doctor? Is it written on my forehead? 2. Now you check if I am wrong, and then you can repeat that to my face." --Lgriot (talk) 13:54, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The OP should look at the etymologies of opium, poppy, soma, wine and hemp, all of which are quite old terms, with Grimm's Law having affected hemp (compare cannabis from the same root) and wine, which is found in the Semitic and Kartvelian language families, as well as Greek and Latin. The provenance of these words shows they were probably Wanderwörter for prehistoric trade goods. μηδείς (talk) 02:07, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Alcoholic beverages have been used for pain relief for millenia. Here's a 75 year old article from Time magazine. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 21:36, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

In the Hebrew scriptures (Proverbs 31:6 KJV) it says: "Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts." Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 21:44, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Here's an abstract of a 1988 article in the medical journal Pain. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 22:26, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

People have natural opioid receptors and produce their own analgesic. The problem of addiction is similar to what happens with hormones. A male that takes testosterone artificially will stop producing it naturally. A person that takes opiates regularly will stop producing natural analgesics. My own personal experience is that using pain medication for 2-3 weeks and then stopping results in a backache. The backache isn't an injury, it's just that my body didn't need to suppress it. It lasts for a few days and the body eventually overcomes it. Serious physical addictions are quite a bit worse as actual metabolic processes are affected and "cold turkey" leads to death.. The backache is more like the psychological addictions. It only takes a few times to realize it's temporary and psychological and not really physical. An analogy is the feeling of "hunger." people that are regularly fed, even if obese, still feel compelled by hunger. However, the body is not quite as cruel as presenting the unrelenting feeling of hunger if no food is present. The feeling of hunger subsides if no food is available, the stomach shrinks and as longer as water is available the body stops pestering for food. This information is available from accounts of people that are castaways or faced with situations where food isn't as readily available. An obese person can feel hunger pangs that far exceed the hunger pangs of an undernourished person in an impoverished country. The body pesters the brain for what it can attain but it's not masochistic enough to make the person more miserable than what they can attain over time. (note: these are long term scenarios and not short term where pain can be excruciating vis a vis torture). --DHeyward (talk) 04:21, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

P.S. I would add that most opiate addictions from medical use is psychological. I read how "horrible" withdrawal is and how it can "fatal" and it's usually related to heroin users. A month ago I was admitted to hospital after a fall that tore tendons in my elbow and caused swelling diagnosed as compartment syndrome. I thought I broke my arm. The X-rays came back negative but my blood tests indicated the muscle damage was causing a condition called Rhabdomyolysis. Basically kidney failure because the kidneys couldn't keep up with dying muscle tissue. My arm hurt a lot, my kidneys didn't hurt at all but that was the real reason I was in hospital. I had choice of oxycodone every 4-6 hours or the morphine drip as part of the IV. I chose oxycodone since I knew how it affect me having taken it before. After a few weeks, oxycodone feels like "normal" and the time for a new dose feels "abnormal." My arm still hurt but after 3 weeks, natural analgesics for everything stops 9arm hurts, back hurts, knee hurts). Increasing thre dose makes those pains go away. Stopping makes those pains worse. Stopping for a week defeats the psych desire for pain relief and "normal" returns without medication. Understanding that the feeling goes away makes stopping more manageable. In my experience, theres's no such thing as long term pain management" with a constant dose of pain medication. Either the patient stops taking meds for a time to get to "mormal" with no psych addiction or physical, or the patient seeks more and more pain medication because "normal" becomes whatever they take. A person taking 60mg of oxycodone a day for a year most likely has the same pain if they detoxed and took no meds for 4-6 weeks. Day 1 through 21 sucks as everything will cause pain but at some point their body recovers and 5mg of oxycodone does just as much as 60mg. --DHeyward (talk) 04:46, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The mechanism of action of opiates is to activate the μ-opioid receptor, rather than directly interacting with some other chemical in the body. So far as I know, that means the mechanism of addiction is always (roughly) the same. The joke is that every 20 years, a patent expires, which means that the old opiate needs to be demonized as an addictive substance, while a new "non-addictive" version is marketed. So opiates gave way to morphine; then the heroic alternative of heroin was introduced; after that it was meperidine with the same sort of claims; [I forget what's next, sorry]; then it was oxycodone. There's been a bit of evergreening with "improved" formulations for that drug, but I think we're about due for the next wonder opiate. Wnt (talk) 12:29, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

In almost every region, there are many plants which have analgesic properties - even the birch tree was used in Asia and North America long before its cousin, aspirin, was made. Collect (talk) 12:58, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The OP might like to look at Zoopharmacognosy - self medication by animals.DrChrissy ^(talk) 13:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Didn't they just "bite the bullet" (literally) in the old days? 2602:252:D13:6D70:DD24:7700:74C1:76C6 (talk) 15:36, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

That was more of a method for coping with pain during surgery (without anesthetics) than for coping with long-term pain. StuRat (talk) 15:54, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Surgery without anaesthetics can occur in any era, but is a sign of extreme backwardness. Even in ancient times surgeons knew to use opium and nightshade, hashish, aconite, etc. to manage pain. My impression is that the demonization of "witches" harmed European medicine, as did the collapse of trade with the Near East; nonetheless, as opium was brought back by Paracelsus, there wasn't that long a period when bullets would truly need to be bitten. For example, despite common misconception of surgery without anaesthesia, the American Civil War left huge numbers of soldiers addicted to opium... Wnt (talk) 02:24, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Are the sizes of noses becoming smaller in recent generations?

I'm aware that our ears become proportionally larger, in relation to our head, as we get older, and I assume the same is true for noses as well as it's largely cartilage.

Recently I've noticed that a lot of young people (early twenties and upwards, girls in particular) have very small noses! Yes, it's a silly question, and I suspect it's confirmation bias on my part once I started noticing. But have noses become smaller in recent years or is it just because I'm getting older and the people I know well have bigger noses because of age?

Thanks 95.146.213.181 (talk) 19:57, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

You might well be seeing the results of plastic surgery, which in some places is quite common, even for girls. See nose job. StuRat (talk) 20:36, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

WAG: Maybe they just seem smaller because people are getting fatter? Clarityfiend (talk) 03:42, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

It may also be a result of a shrinking world. Ethnic and racial features may be blending away in the area you live. A long time ago, they did studies when computer photo composites first became available. When respondents were asked to rate attractiveness, the mythical blend of a thousand faces was considered the most attractive by the sample. Another studt involving purebred dogs that were let loose in the street produced a "mutt" that was similar regardless of where the phenomenon happened. Don't know what that means but I would think that it's not odd that features would lose diversification and trend toward the "mutt" nose - whether that's larger or smaller for your particular group - I'd suggest the change is both a blend and more attractive than what you are used to. Weird, huh? --DHeyward (talk) 03:58, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

If there is indeed a change at the OP's locality. The possibility that he stipulates of confirmation bias is vastly more likely here. With respect, your response seems to suggest a lack of familiarity with the phenotypic genetics involved here. The timescale upon which phenotypes change is constrained by many factors, not the least of which is the length of a generation in the species in question, and phenotypes which are governed by sexual selection can be especially slow to change. And in this case we're not even talking about multiple generation but just the years in which the OP has been a casual observer of the relevant trends. In other words, the degree of globalization and increased mobility for certain ethnic groups is not sufficient to explain such a change according to the mechanisms you propose. Furthermore, your answer presupposes that the average global nose size is smaller than average traditional nose size in the OP's immediate vicinity (or even not in the immediate vicinity, since we can assume from the fact that the OP is using the internet to communicate with us that he has access to global media and that his observations extend to well beyond his immediate environs), and we can't possibly know what any of the actual figures are for any of those values other than (to some limited extent) the global average.

Now, if the OP were an elderly member of a very isolated community with an insular genetic population that had just in the last generation received a huge influx of outsiders from populations with notably smaller average nose morphologies, then yes, that could lead to the kind of situation you suggest. Outside that, there are much more likely explanations. But note that on the global or even national scales that "blending" alone is unlikely to account for smaller features, since, all things being equal, the global average would still stay the same. Significant changes in the size of any feature are instead determined by how likely people with features of a given size are likely to attract mates (sexual selection), how likely people with a given size of a given feature are to survive to procreate (natural selection, and this factor is clearly not a significant one in this context since big or small noses don't confer a significant advantage or disadvantage outside sexual selection) and all of the various anthropic factors that converge with these forces.

In short, I think the OP's guess of confirmation bias is probably at work here. That, or possibly he is picking up on a changing trend in media towards certain standards of beauty--an entirely different kind of selection bias. Certainly it seems to me that a larger-than-average feature is often seen as more likely to stand out as "unattractive" than a smaller-than-average value for the same feature, but that's pure impressionistic speculation on my part. What I can tell you is that there is a great body of research in measuring these features (which actually goes back a great distance due (ironically enough) to obtuse notions of racial superiority which some tried to validate through such measurements, but also extending into modern (and less racially driven) research. But again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, the timeframe we are talking about here argues highly against the notion of a significant change as a result of natural or even sexual selection; to the extent the global average has shifted, it would be controlled more by the fact that relative population growth has risen in certain areas of the world, fallen in some, and remained steady in still others. But I'd rather trust the research in this area than speculate as to whether the new average is smaller (in concordance with the OP's observations) or larger (in contrast to those observations). But I will say I doubt the shift is significant in just the last generation, whichever the direction of the trend. Snow ^{let's rap} 07:38, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Blending doesn't necessarily require genetic blending. Simple migration changes the "average" and 10 random faces from ten years ago might be markedly different than 10 random faces today. At least where I live, ethnic and racial integration is from a world populace and no longer simply regional migrations from historical enclaves. It's worldwide and it's more rapid than at any previous time. It's even different as previous migration was often displacement, not integration. Colonialism changed the average east coast face in the U.S. without much genetic change. The picture morphing experiment didn't create any genetic replicant, just produced an "average." I agree that it's just a bias and somewhere there would be people talking about larger noses but it would not be surprising to me to learn the average has changed due to multi-cultural integration. The census (at least in the U.S) shows some of it as part of the worldwide economy. Marin County is vastly different than a generation ago. --DHeyward (talk) 09:27, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

OP here, thanks for the replies. I'd considered that it might be 'blending' but thought the time frame was too short for that, but certainly it could be one of the factors. I live in an area that was famous for deep coal mining and shipbuilding. When those industries died out between 1960-1980 (I was born in 1974) the population probably changed rapidly, although I haven't any figures to back that up. Some families moving away for new employment, some moving in with new skills or for university education.

Confirmation bias does seem the most prominent reason though. Snow Rise, could you post links to the research measuring body parts if you have them (it doesn't have to be research specifically on noses!), I'd be interested in reading up on that. As for the media portrayal of beauty, I can't say that I've particularly noticed short noses, but now I will be watching out for them :-) 95.146.213.181 (talk) 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Surely--I assume you are looking primarily for anthropometrics with regard to facial features still? In the distant past of psuedo-science meant to validate racist assumptions, this was a heavy field of inquiry (for a great read on this historical context, I can strongly recommend Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man. Modern anthropometric data collection is a broader affair, but data collection continues in the areas of facial features because it intersects with a number of different areas of research, including genetics/epigenetics, pathophysiology, guidelines for reconstructive surgery, biometrics, social and cognitive psychology, and many others. But I've tried to keep the selections here broad and concerned mostly with the proportions themselves rather than their applications. Many of these will be behind a paywall though, I fear.

To begin with, here is a systematic review of the literature in this area--it of course has a great many additional useful references within it: [4]. And here are some other studies along the same lines that you may find interesting: [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18]. Snow ^{let's rap} 20:59, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not particularly looking for research on facial features, that was just what my initial question was about, which I think has been answered, but if your links have relevant info that would be great. I'll enjoy reading up on why scientists conducted the research on measuring body parts, whatever their reasons (I don't think racism exists so much now in general and certainly not in research, excepting a certain ignorant minority of people). I appreciate the effort you've put into all the links. 95.146.213.181 (talk) 21:38, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

You're most welcome; that's what we're here for! :) Snow ^{let's rap} 22:13, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

December 22

Hospital pain management and heroin addicition

One documentary I heard (sorry, forgot the name) claimed that there was a change made in US hospital practices, where pain level was added as a "vital statistic", along with blood pressure, temperature, etc., and that this meant hospital staff then started asking everyone what their pain level was, on a scale of 1 to 10, and prescribing pain meds to lower the level to zero, even when the patient didn't ask for them or complain about the pain. This in turn, was said to have caused a spike in addiction to painkillers, and, once the addicted can no longer get or afford prescriptions, they then turn to illegal drugs like heroin. So, my questions:

1) Is the part about the "pain being listed as a vital stat" true ?

If so:

2) When was this change made ?

3) What justification was given for this change ?

4) Is there any evidence that the pharmaceutical companies pushed it through to increase sales ?

5) Has there been any attempt to remove pain from the list of vital stats, to reduce unnecessary prescription of pain meds, and thus the subsequent abuse and addiction ?

6) Do we have an article on this issue ? StuRat (talk) 03:54, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

1. Yes pain management is considered almost a basic right when seeking medical care and the 1-10 scale is used but it's really a "yes/no" question. Pain treatment is up to the patient but medical providers won't deny pain relief as long as it's not contrary to the immediate health needs of the patient. An opiate OD will not get opiates and they will give opiate agonists to reverse the effects despite the pain it causes. Even police are being trained to administer opiate agonists as first responders. For heroin addicts, that treatment can be very painful and also cause violent reactions (their high is destroyed).

2 It's been in place for a while and recognized by the AMA. Note that this created a conflict where drug seekers would go to emergency room to get a fix. They may receive a fast acting pain reliever but doctors and medical staff are trained to identify drug seekers. This is almost a direct result from DEA efforts to make seeking pain relief a crime. The AMA came down on the side of a clinical decision rather than a moral/legal one.

3 Treating pain is part of the oath doctors take. Why wouldn't hey make patients more comfortable if it didjeopardize their health?

4 I don't think so. It's mostly generic drugs and very cheap. The DEA has more control by limiting the amount of drugs available. For example, why is the U.S. nearly the sole user of hydrocodone?

5 prescriptions are rare from the emergency department. They treat vital stats/pain at the ER and prescriptions beyond 5-10 days are rare. Refills of opiates have been eliminated (even hydrocodone needs new, written prescriptions).

6 Pain management clinics would be the logical place to look. That's not Emergency care where vital stats are taken and addressed. Most states track pres criptions and diversions. Pharmacists that fill prescriptions are also in the loop and doctors that have large diversions, large amounts of early refills or patients that seek multiple providers can be tracked. Overdose deaths are also tracked. The largest growing group of deaths is the elderly that are prescribed pain and anxiety medications. Young people that steal pharmaceuticals from parents or get them from diverted sources is another issue (after the Baltimore riots, the murder rate skyrocketed due to drug turf wars from stolen doses from CVS and other pharmacies).

In short, treating pain isn't necessarily the issue it's controlling diversion to illegitimate channels. Treating pain at the A and E department, where the "pain scale" is used is the smallest part. --DHeyward (talk) 05:15, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Also, to be more clear, I think the premise outlined by your documentary is rather preposterous. It's kind of like arguing illegal recreational marijuana use is the result of medical marijuana. I'm sure there are plenty of illicit marijuana users that say they have a medical allotment but it's not enough. The timing of laws and common sense though is that the drug user developed their habit outside of the medical system and use the medical system to supplement their illicit use. I'd bet paychecks that heroin addicts became addicts long before they were prescribed opiates by a doctor and if they start seeking prescribed opiates it's to supplement their illegal use. Just like there are extremely few methadone users that weren't heroin addicts. Methadone wasn't a gateway drug to heroin, rather heroin led them to methadone. If a kids path to heroin was through prescription opiates, it's highly unlikely it was his prescription that caused it. Nor did he legally obtain beer at 16 or marijuana or cigarettes. --DHeyward (talk) 05:48, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, studies have looked into this, and they don't find a link between painkiller prescription and drug additiction. Here's a good one, and the important quote is: "Conventional wisdom suggests that the abuse potential of opioid analgesics is such that increases in medical use of these drugs will lead inevitably to increases in their abuse. The data from this study with respect to the opioids in the class of morphine provide no support for this hypothesis. The present trend of increasing medical use of opioid analgesics to treat pain does not appear to be contributing to increases in the health consequences of opioid analgesic abuse." Smurrayinchester 10:29, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

That study is less than compelling. A lack of correlation does not imply a lack of causation. Also, anecdotally, stories about these things often involve a transition to non-medical use years after the original prescription. Wnt (talk) 12:50, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

As far as I can see the general consensus is moving more towards the conclusions of the Rat Park experiment. The vast majority of people will not get addicted if they have reasonable circumstances and the heroin was for pain even with fairly long term use. Dmcq (talk) 13:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

"Vast majority" doesn't mean it's not a problem. If only 10% of the people prescribed pain killers become addicts, that's still a serious problem. StuRat (talk) 17:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Nowhere near that, if they were that way inclined they would almost certainly have sought out something like that before. However it does look as though there is at least 10% of the population who at times seek out some way of blotting their lives out whether it is through alcohol or drugs or doing something else stupid. I do wonder how much of it is due to how our society works and whether such problems are reasonably avoidable. Dmcq (talk) 19:15, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Falcon 9 first stage

How high did the first stage go on its flyback trajectory before starting to descend again? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amble (talk • contribs) 04:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

SpaceX's full launch webcast is here. Starting at 1:50 Michael Hammersley gives a short description of the vehicle and the flight.

"The first stage is what gets the entire rocket up to about a hundred kilometers in altitude. At that point the second stage separates and continues taking the eleven Orbcomm satellites up to low earth orbit, which is moving at about eight kilometers per second, or eight times the speed of a rifle bullet. The first stage will actually continue its trajectory and reach an apogee -- that's a maximum height -- of about two hundred kilometers before, and we are very excited about this, before coming back to land at Landing Zone One on Cape Canaveral ground."

-- ToE 05:10, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

And SpaceX's Background on Tonight's Launch says that in previous flights with descents to over-ocean landing tests the stage reached 210 km. (Next to last paragraph of the "SpaceX Reusability Progress to Date" section.) -- ToE 06:13, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! --Amble (talk) 07:19, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Soyuz TMA-19M

How long did the Soyuz TMA-19M mission (or any Soyuz mission to the ISS on average) last, starting from the time the astronauts entered the capsule until they left?

I'm just curious as to how long they had to be cooped up in there. 08:10, 22 December 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:243:D02:7A90:C0C0:8866:8CA3:7723 (talk)

A bit over eleven hours.

Soyuz TMA-19M (last week's launch which delivered Yuri Malenchenko, Timothy Kopra, & Timothy Peake to the ISS) achieved a four orbit fast rendezvous, so they were in space for about six hours from launch to docking. From our article:

Soyuz TMA-19M was launched atop of a Soyuz-FG rocket at 11:03 GMT on 15 December 2015 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. Following the launch, the Soyuz spacecraft successfully achieved orbital insertion 9 minutes later and began its 4-orbit journey to the Space Station. Unusually, while docking, the Kurs docking navigation system failed, and a manual docking had to be performed by Yuri Malenchenko. This delayed docking with the ISS (international space station) by 10 minutes. The Soyuz docked with the ISS at 17:33 GMT the same day. The crew then boarded the ISS at 19:58 GMT.

So that gives 8 hours 55 minutes from launch of the Soyuz to boarding the ISS, but does not tell us how long they spent in the Soyuz prior to launch.

The all-things-space website NASASpaceFlight.com has a detailed article on the flight here but it doesn't give the Soyuz boarding time.

Their forums have live play-by-play reporting and commentary for major space events, and here is the one for TMA-19M. This series of posts report the bus arriving at the pad and the crew getting off and posing on the steps of the tower and then ascending in the elevator, with the note "Crew should be entering the capsule now." at 07:37 (UTC-01:00 default forum time) or 08:37 GMT or T-2 hours 26 minutes, for a total time from boarding the Soyuz to boarding the ISS of about 11 hours 21 minutes. -- ToE 15:23, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Soyuz TMA-08M back in March 2013 was the first flight to utilize the four orbit, six hour fast rendezvous. Previous flights would take two days to rendezvous with the ISS, and that is still the fallback plan if the fast rendezvous isn't practical.

Three and a half months ago Soyuz TMA-18M launched on September 2, 2015 04:37:42 UTC and docked 51 hours later at September 4, 2015 07:42:00 UTC. The NSF article says that the fast-track rendezvous "was cancelled due to the current altitude of the Station" and implies that a fast rendezvous would have been possible but would have been pushing the limits of the Soyuz performance. This ESA blog post says much the same.

Soyuz TMA-12M launched on March 2014 intending to make a fast rendezvous but they missed a course-correction burn due to an attitude control problem, so they reverted to the two day rendezvous. Here is the NSF article on that flight, which has this to say about fast rendezvous:

"The desire to dock to the ISS after just six hours stems from the fact that spending two days in the cramped interior of the Soyuz along with two other crewmates is known to be a stressful and uncomfortable time for astronauts and cosmonauts, many of whom are suffering from symptoms of space sickness at the same time. ... Such a fast rendezvous was never attempted before [TMA-08M] as it requires extremely precise orbital adjustments from the ISS, and extremely precise orbital insertion by the Soyuz-FG booster, which was only deemed possible following a study conducted last year, which showed that such accuracy was achievable with the existing Soyuz-FG booster and modernized Soyuz TMA-M series spacecraft."

The Soyuz spacecraft does have an orbital module with 5 m³ living space and a toilet, so they are not stuck in the launch and reentry capsule the entire time. -- ToE 16:16, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed response. I really appreciate it. 08:44, 24 December 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:243:D02:7A90:C56E:4B66:3A1B:23A (talk)

Mysterious Benoit Species Description

Hello! I am looking for the scientific description of Euphrictus squamosus on the web, but Benoit, the describer of Euphrictus squamosus, wrote a paper on it, the Etudes sur les Barychelidae du Centre Africain (Araneae - Orthognatha) II. - Leptopelmatinae nouveaux, but it is in French! (Also I cannot download it- maybe it is a book?) Can anyone give me a scientific description of Euphrictus squamosus in English (or at least the English translation of Benoit's description)? Thank you for reading, Megaraptor12345 (talk) 12:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I suppose you already know it's a species of tarantula. Benoit's paper is in a journal not in a book but I couldn't find anywhere where it would be available for download. I suppose you've got the journal reference. There are stubs at the Dutch nl:Euphrictus squamosus, Swedish sv:Euphrictus squamosus and Portuguese pt:Euphrictus squamosus which do not say anything more than that it is a tarantula and that it was described by Benoit. Contact Basemetal here 13:03, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Our article tarantula lists all of the sub-families including Selenogyrinae (African tarantulas). But that's a red-link. However, we have List of Theraphosidae species - which includes several spiders discovered by Benoit in 1965 - and there we have Euphrictus squamosus listed under Selenogyrinae. But sadly, that's also a red-link, so English Wikipedia doesn't have an article on that. Wikipedia is surprisingly lacking in articles about african tarantulas. SteveBaker (talk) 16:17, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Searching for just Euphrictus in google, I found Tarantupedia.com...yes, there is an entire Wiki devoted to tarantulas! Anyway, it has an article on Euphrictus squamosus here - but it contains very little information. It references the same french language article - and suggests that it was originally classified as Zophopelma squamosa. Our List of Theraphosidae species says that Euphrictus is the senior synonym for Zophopelma - so we should use Euphrictus. SteveBaker (talk)

Trying another tack, I did a search on the "book" title, and discovered a proper bibliography for it - it was a 6 page article published in "Revue de Zoologie et Botanique africaines." - issue 71 pages 297-303. That journal has undergone several name changes over the years...and was eventually called "The Journal of Afrotropical Zoology (JAZ)" - that journal went bust in 2011 - and now is a part of "European Journal of Taxonomy (EJT)". But are there any archives online? SteveBaker (talk) 16:42, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Looking for archives of Revue de Zoologie et Botanique Africaines is annoying - there are archives held for editions prior to 1933 in a couple of places - and Google holds editions from the 1930's and 1970's - but nothing from the 1960's. Argh! SteveBaker (talk) 16:52, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

CONCLUSION: It appears that this spider was described in just one place - in a 6 page article in a French Journal - for which there appears to be no online copy. So I think you're going to have to start a library search for that journal and get a hold of an original copy. This may just be a job for a physical library reference desk! When you find it, you owe us articles on Selenogyrinae, Euphrictus and Euphrictus squamosus - and with at least that one reference! SteveBaker (talk) 16:52, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The OP could also try to use Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Resource_Request. Contact Basemetal here 17:03, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Volume of the observable universe

Sorry if it is obvious, but I was attempting to calculate the volume of the observable universe. I am assuming it is a sphere and if we can see as far as 13.82 billion light years away, then that is the radius of that sphere, so the volume would be = ¾*π*13,820,000,000³?

That means 6,219,210,624,381,820,000,000,000,000,000 cubic light years, or roughly 6.2 * 10³⁰ cubic light years? Anything wrong with my calculation/assumptions? --Lgriot (talk) 14:50, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

See observable universe for additional information.--Jayron32 15:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

... and just in case you are still confused after Jayron's appropriate link, there are three errors in your calculation. You assume that space is flat, you haven't taken into account expansion since the light started out, and you have a fraction upside down. Dbfirs 15:29, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

(ec) Our article says 4x10⁸⁰m³ - and references a Wolfram Alpha calculation - which says 4x10³² ly³. Your error is due to the expansion of space. While the age of the universe is only 13.8 billion years - over that time, space has expanded - and we can actually see 46.5 billion lightyears. Additionally, your formula for the volume of a sphere is incorrest - it's not 3/4 pi r³, it's 4/3 pi r³.

4/3 x pi x (46.5x10⁹)³ = 4.21 x 10³² ly³ - which agrees with Wolfram's answer and what is listed in our article. SteveBaker (talk) 15:44, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Oops for the 4/3! And of course I should have thought it was already explicitly calculated on the appropriate page. As per my assumption that space is flat, @Jayron32:, is the non-flatness of space likely to change the result very significantly?--Lgriot (talk) 16:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

No. Observations have not detected any deviation from perfect flatness. --Bowlhover (talk) 19:20, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, that was my mistake. I'd intended to write spacetime. Dbfirs 19:31, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

"No. Observations have not detected any deviation from perfect flatness." Is that weird? It just seems unlikely to me. 08:41, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it's true for 3-D space, however unlikely it sounds. You might like to read our article Shape of the universe. Dbfirs 15:08, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Photo details

?

What are those glowing blue spots on the Earth in the photo? Gaps in the clouds showing blue urban lighting? Thanks.--93.174.25.12 (talk) 15:21, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• I suspect that that those are lightning flashes...but there are several of them in the picture - which would seem to be a bit of a coincidence, unless the photo had a reasonably long exposure time. SteveBaker (talk) 15:46, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The EXIF suggests half a second. Nil Einne (talk) 16:20, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I would guess that these are urban lights - but they're not really blue. They just look blue compared to the yellow lights - which are sodium vapor lamps that constitute the majority of the older installed urban street lights in the United States and many other places.

The Space Station crew shoots Nikon cameras (a Nikon D4 in this instance). Nikon automatic white balance is notoriously cool (blue-tinted). So what you're probably seeing in those blue regions are cities with newer, more energy-efficient white lights that either use LED or other technologies. The digital photograph makes them appear visually blue. (Here are some example complaints on various web forums: Nikon DSLR AWB always "bad"; here is Ken Rockwell using the behavior for artistic purposes on the D3. I don't think Nikon's AWB is "bad" or "wrong" - in my opinion, it's actually more scientifically accurate - at the expense of aesthetically-pleasing warm tones like you see on, ahem, some other cameras. This is why I own a bunch of Nikon dSLRs - they have color accuracy good enough to fly on the Space Station! - but this "blue" tendency is a real behavior that Nikon photographers need to be aware of. For example... did you notice that the sun the moon also appears blue in this photograph?

I only know of one city that actually uses blue LEDs for its urban street lights: Shanghai - and only in the upscale downtown districts near Nanbei Elevated Road and Pudong New District. I'd be very interested if anyone else knows of other urban districts that use blue street lighting!

Nimur (talk) 16:19, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Our Color psychology#Blue public lighting article suggests some places in Glasgow and some train stations in Japan although the install date of the former makes me wonder if they used LEDs. (Our article seems incomplete on Japan, [19] seems to have more locations. And [20] makes me think it's not just train stations any more.) Nil Einne (talk) 16:28, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

They look like lightning to me. With an average of 40/s over the entire planet, the number in the shot looks reasonable. Bazza (talk) 16:34, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

It could be lightning - I can't specifically rule it out - but the photo is taken of an area during pre-dawn, an exceptionally unusual time to have a large number of lightning storms.

Here is NASA Earth Observatory's story on detecting lightning from ISS, including some great photographs for comparison.

If we wanted to, we could look up the date and time of the photograph, and then pull up archived weather data (thanks to NOAA)and even archived lightning strike positions from the National Lightning Detection Network [21], and verify whether there were strong storms during the image capture. (There may have been storms).

Nimur (talk) 16:39, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Following the links back to the photo's source, the picture was taken from a point above 29.4° N, 110.7° W (which is in the Mexican state of Sonora) on 2015-08-10 at 07:58:25 GMT. Note that sunrise at ground level from that position on that date would be at 12:48 GMT, almost 5 hours later. Even at, say, Kansas City, sunrise would only be at 6:27 AM CDT, which is 11:27 GMT. So this is not middle-of-the-night weather, not pre-dawn, even though from orbital altitude the sun is visible.

I believe the brightest city in the photo, just above center, is Dallas and the highway running "down" through the center of the photo is Interstate 20; running to the right from Dallas is Interstate 35, leading to Austin and then (brighter) San Antonio, with Houston just "above" it and nearer the coast. In that case the brightest city to the left of Dallas is Oklahoma City, with Tulsa just "above" it; and then I'd say the line of blue lights is a row of thunderstorms across eastern Kansas and southern Missouri—an area well known for violent weather—with Kansas City just beyond them. It's harder to identify the foreground locations since they are cloudy, but as Stu says below, that alone supports the explanation that the blue lights are thunderstorms also; so also does the appearance of a bright light surrounded by dimmer light, which is the cloud lit up by the lightning. These locations would be in northern Mexico or west Texas.

I'll leave it for someone else to put this to bed by verifying the actual weather on that date at those locations. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 21:46, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I've now been convinced these bright areas are clouds illuminated by lightning. I'm open-minded enough to entertain any other reasonable explanatory theories, too - there's always a certain amount of uncertainty in this type of photographic forensics. I'm not 100% convinced at the specific city identifications that 76.69.45.64 offers. I don't have anything to specifically refute these locations - but I wouldn't bet money on the identifications, either. With a lot more effort - and if it really mattered - we could narrow down the uncertainty and be a lot more exact about the location and the field of view, based on the ISS location and the timestamp. Thanks for tracking down the NASA Earth Observatory link! It appears that I previously used an incorrect date for the photo, off by a few days - thanks for also spotting that - which means we are probably looking at moonrise, not sunrise!) Nimur (talk) 22:22, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Damn, you're right! Of course it's the Moon in the photo—the Sun would be much brighter and would probably be lighting up some of the visible ground. Duh. I assumed that the astronaut-photographer had identified it as sunrise, so I believed what I was reading (but the source page doesn't say any such thing); and I therefore assumed it must be correct that the sun could rise so many hours earlier when seen from low orbit, even though it seemed counterintuitive. In fact the Moon rose at 09:20 GMT as seen from that location on the ground on that date, which fits much better with the time of the photo.

Of course I was also fooled by the fact that the Moon looks round in the photo even though it was a pretty thin crescent. But zooming in on it, it's clear that the lower limb (toward the Sun) is much brighter; in the photo it's overexposed enough to actually look bigger than the rest of the disk, which is just lit by Earthlight. But I was an idiot to accept that it was the Sun.

Also, no credit for "spotting" the incorrect date, please; I just copied the date from the source page without noticing that another one had been given. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 23:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC), copyedited later.

A red sprite, blue-white lightning, and yellow city lights over Malaysia, as seen from the International Space Station. StuRat (talk) 01:53, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I go with the lightning theory. My reasons:

1) There would be more of a continuum between different light types in various cities, not such a stark contrast, since no city has exclusively one form of lighting.

2) The areas with the blue light seem to all be cloud covered, which I associate with lightning. The yellow lights, on the other hand, are sometimes cloud covered and sometimes not, which is what we would expect of city lighting. StuRat (talk) 17:40, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

This pic shows both lightning and city lights, and the early and late stages of a lightning strike look a lot like the pic in question. StuRat (talk) 01:53, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I have absolutely no idea. But it's interesting that if you look at the very furthest blue spot at full resolution, it seems to be displaced upward, just a little, from the apparent horizon. I have no idea if that horizon is land or a layer in the air, mind you - there's a much more apparent boundary line that is a green color at a much higher altitude - I really wonder what the heck that is, because the Earth always looks like it has such a sharply bounded atmosphere in these shots. But whether by a little or by a lot, the blue would seem to be above the ground ... I think. Wnt (talk) 22:32, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The acid test would be to find a blue/white patch over ocean or in an unpopulated part of the land. But personally, I doubt that there would be the purity of white light after it's been filtered through all of that atmosphere (this is a very oblique view) - blue light is scattered by the air, so distant lights tend to be yellow-ish - even if the light sources were white. Lightning is bright enough that plenty of blue light would get through - and if it's above-cloud lightning, it could be at high altitude (hence less air scattering the blue). The cloud patterns visible in the blue/white areas seem like there is some bad weather under them too.

If there is no open water area in the photo, I wonder if we could find other shots from a few seconds before or after?

SteveBaker (talk) 01:24, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, you can use the Earth Observatory Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth search method. For example, if you search based on NASA Photo ID (these are sequential, around the time of the posted photo):

ISS044-E-45540
ISS044-E-45541
ISS044-E-45542
ISS044-E-45543
ISS044-E-45544

...then you'll find multiple photos of the same region. The illuminated areas flicker on and off between frames - so that leaves little doubt that they are lightning! You can also search for ID ranges, ISS044-E-45520-45580 which include some spectacular sequences!

Nimur (talk) 02:08, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Yeah - that proves it. Thanks Nimur! SteveBaker (talk) 05:48, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Railways

Is there any country in the world where the railways operate 100% as a private commercial business independent from government influence, ignoring things like regulation etc which affects all private businesses? 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:CD71:6723:BFF7:6B47 (talk) 16:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Depends on what you mean by "the railways", I suppose. Freight railroads in the U.S. are privately owned. The private railroads own most of the physical track in the U.S. Historically, U.S. passenger railroads were mostly private as well, until they became money-losing ventures with the increasing use of automobile and air travel, which led the federal government to establish Amtrak. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 19:31, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

It's hard to imagine a private railroad being able to ignore regulations...laws are laws. Certainly private railroads in the USA are subject to government regulation. SteveBaker (talk) 01:08, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I think Steve has misunderstood the question. I believe the question is about railways that are are independent from the governemnt except insofar as they fall under the sort of regulations that would affect all private businesses. For example, ths US is wrong because of Amtrak and the Alaska Railroad, Canada is wrong because of VIA Rail and provincially operated commuter services, the UK is wrong because of Network Rail, and so on. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 07:01, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

AFAIK specific regulations and government involvement were limited during a fair amount of the Tranz Rail era in NZ although I expect there may have been some. I think any company with such significant infrastructure is likely to consider there to be a risk if they do something too major. Nil Einne (talk) 08:24, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

• Your best bet would be to look at railways in relatively underdeveloped countries, where the government doesn't have the resources (financial or organizational) to run complex infrastructure but the mining/fruit/sugar companies have deep pockets (and effectively form a state within a state). It looks like all railways in Liberia are private, and historically many Caribbean/American countries only had private railways (mostly of these are closed or nationalized). Senegal's only railway, the Dakar–Niger Railway, is privately owned (and has been hacked to bits as a result). Also, there are a few countries such as Monaco and Lesotho where the railways are state operated... but are operated by a different state (in this case, France and South Africa respectively). Smurrayinchester 08:43, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

What about Japan? I read the Wikipedia article on it but not quite sure I understand it or even whether the article is complete. It seems to be quite brief. 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:25D6:DA0F:C29F:7E08 (talk) 13:34, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

If you're looking for a country where the entirety of the railways are private (rather than just independent unconnected parts), than Japan is out. Per our Japan Railways Group article, some small parts are still owned by Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're involved in modern construction from our article, and Japan Freight Railway Company uses the private assets anyway. Nil Einne (talk) 14:30, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I suppose it's hard for private companies to build new lines due to the amount of time and money it costs. 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:603B:6322:7D0A:CFBA (talk) 16:38, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

And property rights. It's extremely difficult to buy uninterrupted stretches of land - if just one person refuses to sell, the whole project is jeopardised. This why even private railways (and motorways) are generally built with some government backing - you really need eminent domain/compulsory purchase powers to complete the project. Smurrayinchester 22:17, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Share of scientific publications written in English

How big is the share of English among scientific publications, and how has it developed through the years? Had other language of science (French, Latin, German, Russian, Greek, another one?) had a bigger share in the past? --Scicurious (talk) 19:12, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

This is a few years old, but it is very short and explains that about 80% of all scientific papers are in English. See here. It should be obvious that Greek and Latin were popular long long ago. That has a Western bias though because just as many scientific ideas originated in India and China. Since the advent of mass printing, English has dominated science journals - which is why so many science papers are in English. From my experience, even conferences are in English. I've been to conferences in Spain, Italy, Turkey, and China. All of them were in English. To present, the person must present in English. Further, my own publications have been translated into other languages for local publication - primarily in Japanese. So, there are many cases where a single paper is represented in multiple languages. 209.149.113.52 (talk) 20:29, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

more scholarly refs on dominance of English in science publication, some talk about impacts on non-anglophones and what the future might hold. Last one has some recent stats: [22] [23] [24]. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:36, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Could the numbers above, which point to 75% in social sciences and up to 90% in natural sciences, be misleading? Maybe it's the case that English articles are cited 75% of all times in social sciences and 90% in natural science. So, it could just be a kind of blindness towards articles in foreign languages. People don't take a look at articles not written in English, since 'hey everything is in English.'Scicurious (talk) 14:27, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

You must define what you mean by "article." If you are referring to a written work that appears in a scientific journal, then I believe that it must be at least 75% of the articles are in English because more than 75% of the journals are in English. If, instead, you want to call any written paper an article, then there are articles written in every language. It will have more to do with how many college students there are per language. Also, being in English doesn't prohibit an article from being in another language. As I pointed out above, I write my articles in English, but they are translated into other languages. 209.149.113.52 (talk) 14:40, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I mean original article with an ISSN. Although I realize that it's difficult to decide how many articles do not get translated.

If you start counting every publication (patents, blogs, guidelines) then, I doubt the English share is still 75%. Scicurious (talk) 14:53, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

In the period from about 1870 through WWI, a *much* higher percentage of Chemistry and Physics papers and reference works were in German. But between 1939 and 1955, there was a bottleneck where a *very* higher percentage of those people in a position to publish papers were in the English speaking world. The Soviets would have published primarily for internal use and thus published in Russian, but pretty much anyone else would have published in English.

December 23

Falcon 9 Flight 20 and why it is historical

I keep hearing news reports about how Falcon 9 Flight 20 is so ground breaking for landing back on the Earth and being reusable and such. But I thought that was already done with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company. So, what's the difference here that I'm not seeing? Why was the Falcon landing so much better? Dismas|^(talk) 01:58, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

IIRC, the Blue Origin launch was not an orbital space launch. Falcon 9 was. Blue Origin was proof of concept, Falcon 9 was the real deal. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 02:00, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Blue Origin's craft reached 100km altitude, then returned to a soft landing. Falcon 9 can reach low-earth-orbit - which is at least 160km altitude.

That doesn't sound like that big of a difference until you understand that Blue Origin's mission is to propel a lightweight re-entry vehicle "into space" and to come straight back down again...Falcon 9 can launch 13 tonnes of payload and add the necessary 8 km/second of horizontal speed to maintain a stable orbit. 13 tonnes is about half of the low-earth-orbit payload of the space shuttle at a tiny fraction of the cost and a tiny fraction of the turn-around time and without needing a runway, parachutes and all that stuff - which is an incredibly impressive feat.

SteveBaker (talk) 05:43, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, both. Dismas|^(talk) 18:40, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Note that the first stage of the Falcon rocket that successfully landed was never in orbit - so it technically is a sub-orbital flight (that section goes up, does a flip, lands near where it launched). Blue Origin is a rocket with a completely sub-orbital flight (which has so far successfully landed the capsule but not the first stage). Rmhermen (talk) 23:09, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

@Rmhermen: You might not have heard the more recent news. Blue's flight back on 29 April 2015 landed the capsule and lost the booster, but just a month ago on 23 November 2015 they landed both capsule and booster successfully. Video of the second flight is here. That particular video was a little too slick for my taste. I much preferred the production style used in the video of their April flight here. (No CGI, less slick, feels more real but still with a strong emotional appeal.) This raw video and audio from the April flight is also an interesting watch. -- ToE 01:10, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Popular Mechanics's Two Quick Illustrations to See How Badly SpaceX Beat Blue Origin illustrates some differences by comparing trajectories and vehicle sizes. -- ToE 01:14, 24 December 2015 (UTC) Edit: Here is another vehicle size comparison image showing the 48 m F9 booster and the 16 m BO booster standing on either side of the 46 m Statue of Liberty.

No large moons for gas giants and ice giants ?

In our solar system, none of the large planets have moons which are large, compared with themselves (although they may be "large" when their absolute size is compared with moons on the much smaller terrestrial planets and dwarf planets).

1) So, is this just random luck, or is there some inherent reason why large planets can't have moons which are a significant portion of their own size (which would probably make the moon also a gas or ice giant) ?

2) Would we able to detect this situation, if it existed, when we find exoplanets ? StuRat (talk) 16:50, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I think that the real issue is that moons that are "large" compared with their primary are unusual. In our system, we basically are aware of one that belongs to a rocky planet, and that is explained by the giant impact hypothesis. We previously thought that another planet, Pluto, had a large moon, Charon, but it has been downgraded to a dwarf planet, and there are other systems of dwarf planets that are essentially double dwarf planets. So the real issue isn't about large moons of large planets, but about a large moon of a rocky planet. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:03, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, we have 4 large planets and 4 small planets (excluding Pluto). So, even there 1/4 small planets in our solar system has a large moon, compared to 0/4 large planets. And if we include dwarf planets, some of those have large moons, too (not sure if we could detect them all). So, it's an admittedly small sample size, but it's still enough to justify asking if there is a theoretical reason why large planets can't have relatively large moons. StuRat (talk) 17:12, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

The term would be double planet for planet pairs that are similar in size. It seems theoretically possible, and people have even discussed ways to look for them [25]. Searching for such objects is probably only just getting started. This [26] suggests that gas giants paris might form in ~10% of planetary systems with gas giants. Dragons flight (talk) 17:35, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I believe the distinction between a "double-planet" and a "planet+moon" relationship is that the center of rotation of the two bodies is INSIDE one of the bodies if it's a planet+moon setup and BETWEEN the two bodies if it's a double-planet. This means that density is an important factor in deciding which of those you have. SteveBaker (talk) 21:36, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

That would be the barycenter. I don't know if I agree with that def, though, as a small, distant planet co-orbiting with a black hole might then qualify, since the event horizon on the black hole is small, and the wide distance would move the barycenter beyond it. StuRat (talk) 22:10, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Isn't Titan (moon) considered a large moon? Yes, it is smaller in relation to Saturn but it is larger than the Earth's moon - Unless I read something wrong. Just curious. Thanks for any replies. MarnetteD|Talk 22:17, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

That's precisely why I included the note "(although they may be "large" when their absolute size is compared with moons on the much smaller terrestrial planets and dwarf planets)." I am only looking for moons which are large relative to their own planet. StuRat (talk) 05:54, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Probably the same reason there is no planet close to the size of the sun. Binary is stable but if the center of mass of the three-body problem causes instabiltiy, it gets rectified. It's likely a matter of time relative to size. Two Jupiter size masses orbiting the sun as an orbiting pair would not be stable for a long period. To use terms above, the barycenter dominates te 3-body problem for a long time and is effectively one mass. When the barycenter isn't dominated by a single body, it deteriorates into a much less stable problem. --DHeyward (talk) 07:05, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

The research paper I gave above says that orbiting binary planets at least 0.3 AU from a central sun-like star and at least 4 diameters apart from each other will be stable for longer than 10 billion years. That's functionally stable for the life of star. Dragons flight (talk) 12:24, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

If a planet was close to the size of the Sun it would be a star. Possibly a majority of stars are part of multiple star systems, so such a situation is not rare. My personal speculation is large planets like gas giants tend to pick up everything along their orbital path, which makes it difficult for two large planets to form near each other. Even smaller planets with nearby orbits seem to be prone to instability, as is thought to have happened with Earth and Theia. Following on from that, I wonder if interactions with other solar system bodies would destabilize things (which is thought to have been a factor in the giant impact hypothesis). Some scientists think the solar system may have had a fifth gas giant that got kicked out of the system early on due to perturbations from other planets. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 15:04, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

They are small as compared to their parent planets because they were formed (accreted) from the material that was left after the central planet formation. There were relatively little material left and the accretion process is also quite inefficient. Ruslik_Zero 12:49, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

4 diameters apart doesn't seem like much to ask. Are any moons in the solar system within 4 diameters of their planet ? StuRat (talk) 12:47, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Io and the four inner moons of Jupiter, Dione and 3 other large and 14 other small moons of Saturn. Dragons flight (talk) 12:58, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

@Dragons flight: I'm not convinced that double planet is the correct term and our article may be misnamed. The term more usually used is binary planet, including in the two sources you offered as examples. The more usual meaning of double planet is simply an exosystem with two planets, of which several have been discovered. SpinningSpark 19:27, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

• The barycenter of the Solar System lies outside Sol, given the mass of Jupiter. Yet Jupiter is not a star, nor a brown dwarf. The barycenter of the Terra-Luna system lies 1000 miles below the surface of the Earth, so our planet and its moon are not a binary system. But the Pluto-Charon system is. μηδείς (talk) 03:32, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

  Well I don't know how to go about defining a binary system, there does not seem to be an official definition, but if you are trying to claim that double planet and binary planet are different things, then that is still at odds with our article which treats the terms as synonyms. SpinningSpark 16:55, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I have no opinion on preferred terminology, I am just pointing out the interesting fact that the Pluto-Charon and the Sol-Jupiter systems orbit a barycenter between the two objects, and in this sense are unique in our star system, as far as i am aware. μηδείς (talk) 19:21, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

U.K. Rail

Watching a doc about railways in the uk, what's the difference between a mobile operations manager and section manager? They seem to do the same thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:603B:6322:7D0A:CFBA (talk) 17:26, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

A Section Manager is an administrative position (see this job description from Network Rail). They're responsible for, well, managing a section - for ensuring that all the work is done properly, and the contractors are competent and paid on time. An MOM, on the other hand, would have been called a "foreman" in the old days - they're responsible for leading one of the small groups of people who actually do the work, and are expected to do some of it themselves. See this forum thread. Tevildo (talk) 18:55, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

But on the doc it showed section managers doing maintenance work with their "gang". Are MOMs part of the section managers "gang" then? 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:603B:6322:7D0A:CFBA (talk) 22:40, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Alao just found this [27]. It seems to imply that MOMs respond to incidents more than do maintenance? I'm really confused now. 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:603B:6322:7D0A:CFBA (talk) 22:52, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the essential part of the MOM's job title is "mobile". They have to be on-call and ready to respond to incidents requiring immediate attention, rather than being involved with routine planned maintenance. The MOM will report to the Operations Manager (responsible for the day-to-day running of the railway), not the Section Manager. The essential part of the Section Manager's job title is "manager". They'll do quite a bit of on-site supervision of their gangs, and (especially if there are cameras present) may very well assist with the work, but they're not personally responsible for doing the work; rather, they're responsible for getting it done. A Section Manager will earn considerably more than an MOM. Tevildo (talk) 23:24, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I see. Thanks. That makes a bit more sense. Also the doc mentioned the many challenges the railway faces in the uk and how these cause delays, whether it's heavy rain, windy conditions, snow & ice. This is all understandable but how comes other countries can run their railways better with less problems and at a lower price too, Germany and Japan for example. Is it because our rail network is much older and wasn't designed to cope with today's demands? And why are our rail fares so expensive? Is this politics? 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:603B:6322:7D0A:CFBA (talk) 01:09, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

See History of rail transport in Great Britain 1948–1994 and Impact of the privatisation of British Rail for our relevant articles. I can also recommend Eleven Minutes Late by Matthew Engel. Tevildo (talk) 08:55, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Also, wouldn't the section managers gang also do reactive work? 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:603B:6322:7D0A:CFBA (talk) 01:21, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, definitely, and a major part of the section manager's job will be to organize this work, and plan things so as to have adequate capacity for both routine and reactive maintenance. Tevildo (talk) 08:55, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Birth control v. MTF hormone replacement therapy v. anti-aging hormone replacement therapy

A lot of these regimens basically involve an estrogen and a progestin (which can sometimes serve the dual purpose as an antiandrogen) but for a while I've been puzzled at why bioidentical hormones are only emphasized for transwomen, and the risks of birth control and anti-aging HRT often mentioned to transwomen are based off of studies that use ethinyl estradiol or Premarin. It kind of puzzles me why bioidentical hormones aren't marketed to ciswomen -- is it because ciswomen value "convenience" more than transwomen? I suppose bioidentical hormones can't be packaged in an IUD, so they would either have to be given as suppositories, sublingual tablets or injections instead. Yanping Nora Soong (talk) 20:41, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

December 24

Removing stains from white clothes with UV cross linking machine

I have a white shirt with various stains on it. I was wondering whether subjecting it to UV light using a laboratory UV cross linking device could be expected to bleach it back to white. The shirt has other colours which I intend not to bleach by having them folded underneath. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.255.234.224 (talk) 16:17, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

It would be unlikely to remove every conceivable stain, so it would depend on what the stains are. Sunlight is known to bleach lily pollen (see here, for example) so you could always start by experimenting with sunlight.--Phil Holmes (talk) 16:58, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

UV light may degrade some polymers, so you may end up with a crumbly patch and a hole. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:45, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Refraction of particles

How do you demonstrate the refraction of particles? And why do they refract through different mediums anyway? It can't be the same change in speed like for waves?2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:3538:7270:A1B:B3EF (talk) 16:54, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

See Electron-refractive effect. The atomic structure of crystals acts as a diffraction grating to the electrons. See DeBroglie wavelength if you don't understand how a particle can have a wavelength. SpinningSpark 18:55, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

How bad is it for a scientist to ignore publications not written in English?

The question above (Share of scientific publications written in English) makes me wonder: how safe is it for a scientist to ignore publications in languages other than English? Could one assume, at least in the natural sciences, that if it cannot be found in English it's either unimportant or non-existent? --Denidi (talk) 17:20, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

In the last 30 or 40 years or so, at least in my field (biomed) I would say yes. There are already plenty of bad journals in English. If you can't even get it in one of those, I'm not going to be paying much attention to you..... Fgf10 (talk) 17:36, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

In mathematics until about 20 years ago many important English language journals accepted papers written in some other language (mostly German or French, but that depended on the journal) though in practice that was taken advantage of fairly rarely. I bet nowadays that option is no longer even offered. Contact Basemetal here 18:18, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

In geology, I occasionally find interesting stuff about regional geology in local language journals. So over the last few years I've read through useful articles in Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and Norwegian, but I would emphasise that it's a very small proportion of the literature that I do read. Mikenorton (talk) 19:39, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

• Even when articles are not written in English they are often translated, and in any case the abstract at least usually appears in an English version. So an alert scientist is unlikely to miss anything critical. Looie496 (talk) 19:55, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

• How "bad" is it? We don't answer requests for opinion. Do you have an actual request for references, Scicurious? μηδείς (talk) 20:17, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

I suppose you mean me, not Scicurious, otherwise you are posting on the wrong question. Anyway, although my question lends itself to discussion and personal opinion, it also can be answered, interpreting it reasonably, pointing to information about secondary research. I fail to see how such a question is not adequate for a ref. desk. Denidi (talk) 01:21, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Tetanic convulsion

Is a tetanic convulsion the same thing as an involuntary tetanic contraction? In other words, is that the right place to redirect the term to? SpinningSpark 18:48, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes to the first question, no to the second. Looking at various on-line medical dictionaries, "tonic spasm" and "tonic seizure" are the most common synonyms. "Tonic spasm" redirects to Paroxysmal attack (which I'm not sure is the right target), and "tonic seizure" redirects to Tonic-clonic seizure (which seems like a better one). There's also Convulsion itself and Non-epileptic seizure to consider. Tevildo (talk) 19:29, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

...However the tetanic contraction article was unsourced and full of misinformation, which I've removed. Looie496 (talk) 19:51, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

December 25

Project management

In the UK, are project managers better respected and better known professionals than engineers? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:5146:5AF8:3AE6:5EDF (talk) 11:43, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

There's no way to answer that. Besides the problem of rating respect and/or fame, both professions are very widely dispersed, being present in all kinds of businesses. They're also completely different kinds of jobs, so it's like comparing apples to oranges. 99.235.223.170 (talk) 15:53, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I like oranges better than apples. --Trovatore (talk) 21:29, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

"Language Development"

[Moved to RD/L] Tevildo (talk) 18:25, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Good introductory book on algorithms for a middle-school kid

cross-posting my question from the Math refdesk. Happy Holidays! --Dr Dima (talk) 20:22, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Calculating joules without distances

Usually, the number of joules expended is calculated by multiplying the force in newtons by the distance in metres. But how do you calculate the expenditure of joules when there are no distances involved? E.g. how can I calculate the energy burned by holding a 1 kg laptop against the force of gravity for 60 seconds, but without moving it upwards or downwards? THank you.217.121.5.132 (talk) 20:44, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

In this case, you can still use the distance. The distance moved is zero, the work done is zero. However, your body will also generate heat just by standing there - this, unfortunately, can't be simply calculated. Tevildo (talk) 20:55, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, there is in fact nonzero work done. Just not at such a macroscopically observable level. To hold the laptop against gravity, I believe you have to twitch muscle fibers (though I'm sketchy on the details), and that does work on the fibers themselves. You could compute this work if you knew how often the fibers twitch, how far they move, and under what force. As you say, this is not really a simple calculation of the sort that is usually embodied in a free-body diagram. --Trovatore (talk) 21:01, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

So there is no equation to calculate how many calories I'll burn if I hold a weight of X kg for Y seconds? 217.121.5.132 (talk) 21:13, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

No simple high-school-physics type equation, no. There might be (indeed, there almost certainly are) mathematical models that will estimate that value. But they will be approximate rather than exact, and (speculating here) they may involve inputs that have predictive power for your physiological makeup (e.g. age, sex, physical condition).

--Trovatore (talk) 21:19, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

The rate of energy burn can be measured by measuring the amount of carbon dioxide exhaled as a measure of the metabolic rate. Less accurately, the amount of air intake can be measured and assume that all the oxygen taken in, or a fixed percentage of it, is burnt to CO₂. Even less accurately, the breathing rate can be recorded. There is a known relationship between energy and amount of oxygen consumed (its about 5 calories per litre of oxygen, but it does vary with type of food consumed). The quiescent metabolic rate (at rest) must be subtracted from this, and the answer is not going to be terribly precise because holding up a laptop is a very small part of the total energy consumption. However, a better question, as Trovatore hinted, is why does a static hold burn energy at all? It is certain that no one can indefinitely hold the dumbbell lift shown, yet no dynamic energy is being expended. SpinningSpark 00:42, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Is there H2O (water) in milk?

23:47, 25 December 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.249.70.153 (talk)

Have you read Milk it might help. MilborneOne (talk) 23:50, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Gas on a planet and saterites

Can we have gas on moon, Mars, and Pluto? (I can not be surely back) Like sushi 49.135.2.215 (talk) 01:40, 26 December 2015 (UTC)