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July 28

"In the hospital being treated with oxygen for his lungs"

(This is about Herman Cain.[1]) What does that phrase mean? Supplemental oxygen usually doesn't require hospitalization. Plus if he is conscious and able to speak, I figure they'd have him say something to his well-wishers on TV, so it sounds like he's still not in great shape. Could it mean intubation? Hyperbaric oxygen? Or are they just being vague about his condition? Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 05:59, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

The last sequence of tweets about Cain's condition does not provide enough information to be sure. They go, "But he is still in the hospital being treated with oxygen for his lungs. [...] Re-strengthening the lungs is a long and slow process, and the doctors want to be thorough about it."^[2] The lungs being affected by COVID-19 can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome, for which hyperbaric oxygen treatment is being used,^[3] and since this would require continued hospitalization, this appears to be a definitely possible explanation. But we can't be sure without further information.  --Lambiam 08:56, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, doesn't sound like hyperbaric therapy is usually given 24/7. It's done with a mask on, though. If it's just hyperbaric then from the descriptions I'd expect he is conscious and could smile and wave for a camera, even if he can't talk. Could be be on ECMO? I guess we will just have to wait for updates. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 21:35, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Given that his death was announced this morning, I'd say his condition 3 days ago was probably not good. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 16:07, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Why do they put tubes in you instead of an external mask or dialysis but lung stuff instead of dialysis organs (if alveoli are too fucked to work)?

Maybe there's way too few lung analog of dialysis machines but why not just glue a damn oxygen mask to the patient instead of lubricating a tube down their throat? If the tube machine moves the diaphragm for the patient with pressure cycles then how hard could it be to connect a fighter plane-style mask to it instead? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:36, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

I suspect the major reason is that with external positive pressure, you would push all kinds of undesirable material into the lungs - in particular parts of the contents of the stomach, if the patient throws up. Such events almost always lead to (an additional) pneumonia, which is a serious risk for patients (which is a polite way of saying "they die like flies"). Also, as far as I know, "fighter pilot masks" don't use significant (or any) positive pressure, they just provide oxygen and rely on the normal breathing of the pilot to move the breathing gas. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:09, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the point is that such machines are needed when the patient cannot breathe alone. Applying pressure externally would probably not bring any air into the lungs because the throat could lock closed with undesirable short term consequences. But perhaps you mean this would quickly free one more bed, wouldn't it?

And sorry but I fail to understand what you mean with the second part of your question '.. or dialysis but lung stuff instead of dialysis organs' 2003:F5:6F0C:9500:2DDB:7E1A:35F8:B774 (talk) 19:18, 28 July 2020 (UTC) Marco PB

I think the second part may be in some way a question about extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. - Nunh-huh 19:42, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

I happen to have personal experience with this. I recently spent 6 days on a respirator. The first 4 days I was kept unconscious. Then 2 days on the respirator. Then 4 days on Non-invasive ventilation. Then another 2 days with just supplemental oxygen. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:45, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Why'd they wake you up for only 2 days just to make you uncomfortable? Why not wait till after intubation? Did you catch it while maskless? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:43, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Catch it while maskless? Oh, I get it. You thought I had Covid-19. I had cardiac arrest caused by an undetected electrical problem in my heart. As for why they woke me up, here is how it works. You can breathe on your own for a couple of minutes, then you can't and the respirator takes over. You rest, then do it again. You can lift your arm maybe an inch, then it falls back exhausted. You rest, then do it again. That's your job. Keep it up and eventually you can roll on your side. More exercise and eventually you can sit upright for a whole minute. Skipping a bunch of steps, eventually you can walk. They wake you up so you can start working at getting your strength back. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:02, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

So that's what it's called, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. So probably a reason why that's a laster resort than intubation is that they apparently have to stab the aorta and vena cava or something, in dialysis you don't have to clean a gallon and change of blood before the patient suffocates so it can be slower and you can stab less extreme locations so it's more routine. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:43, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Usually known as its acronym, ECMO. Yes, ventilators are less troublesome and less dangerous, and have been around longer, so they would be the default. - Nunh-huh 22:28, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

And if you can handle Non-invasive ventilation instead of the tube down your throat, they do that. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:02, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

"Overall, 19% of hospitalised [COVID-19] patients require non-invasive ventilation, 17% require intensive care, 9% require invasive ventilation, and 2% require extracorporeal membrane oxygenation". BMJ Best Practice Alansplodge (talk) 16:30, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Again from personal experience, that non-invasive ventilation was a huge help. I was working really hard at breathing on my own, knowing that doing the breathing exercises the physical therapist gave me was the best way to get out of that hospital room. But my chest muscles got super tired. When that happened, I put the mask back on and the machine did most of the work, pushing air in and pulling it out and giving my muscles time to rest up until I could try again. Plus, I got to do a great Darth Vader impression... :) --Guy Macon (talk) 17:14, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

July 29

Guillermo Gonzalez (astronomer)

Does Guillermo Gonzalez (astronomer) have a middle name or initial? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:27, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't think so, no paper by him or about him seems to cite a middle name/initial even if all co-autors/contributors do have one, e.g. here [[4]], and here they state that he has none (or they also found none): "Guillermo Gonzalez, no middle initial, b. 1963" at [[5]]. But I would have expected it, this 'middle name or initial' seems to be a pure US American habit. 2003:F5:6F0C:9500:4070:591A:3CFE:72F (talk) 16:41, 29 July 2020 (UTC) Marco PB

Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 17:07, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Tornadoes

Which area of the USA sees the most tornado warnings per year? I mean a single location, not a state or county. According to this Jackson, Mississippi averages 2.5 warnings a day. That can't be realistic, right? 93.136.62.103 (talk) 23:06, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Sounds perfectly plausible to me, as days with such warnings will often have multiple warnings.--Khajidha (talk) 00:02, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Really? That sounds like an extreme amount to me here in Europe. With 8000 probable tornado events in 10 years, how is any part of the city still standing?! How many days a year do such tornado-prone places actually have tornadic thunderstorms? 93.136.62.103 (talk) 00:28, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Nowhere near all of those warnings actually result in tornadoes, though. But see tornado alley. --Khajidha (talk) 01:16, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Jackson, Mississippi is fairly good-sized, so even if hit by a tornado the damage is likely to be localized within some part of the city. When small towns are hit, it can be a different story. See Xenia, Ohio, for example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:21, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Among the places you can look:

• NOAA's Storm Prediction Center - especially in their Severe Weather Events Archive
• NOAA Climate Science and Information
• the Storm Events Database archive at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information ("...Formerly the National Climatic Data Center", the name you will probably recognize if you've been a student of weather science for a while).

Of course, the first place I looked was my paper copy book of the Aviation Weather Advisory Circular, AC 00-06A (or the newer "B" edition, also available at zero cost). In Chapter 11, the chapter on severe weather (thunderstorms), there are annual average charts with isolines around the mean number of thunderstorms per year. Personally, I find this to be the most meaningful way to visualize the data for "where the most storms happen," though you could probably deduce any number of other ways to parse and chart and graph the raw data products.

Quoting directly from that book: "Tornadoes occur most frequently in the Great Plains states east of the Rocky Mountains. Figure 111 shows, however, that they have occurred in every State." Figure 111, a few pages later, normalizes tornado incidence, characterizing the "mean annual number of tornadoes per 10,000 square miles." This is not the only way to compare event-counts - after all, Texas is a lot bigger and more densely-populated than Oklahoma, so while Oklahoma has fewer tornadoes than Texas, Oklahoma also has more tornadoes per person and more tornadoes per square mile! So you can see one example of how things get complicated, when you look into the details - even if you spend just a few minutes digging in! It only gets more complicated as you learn more about climate and statistics and data-science.

If what you specifically seek is the number of issued tornado warnings, you ought to know that an issued warning does not have a one-to-one correspondence with a weather-event. Here is an informational page explaining exactly what it means when there is a tornado alert from the National Weather Service. So if you are trying to interpret the number of events, with any kind of meaningful scientific rigor, you need to be aware of the bias between the rate of occurrence of (one or more) natural event(s) and rate of issuance of one or more alert(s) for the event(s).

The original question asked about a "single location," ... but I won't even try to crack open the proverbial can-of-worms that encases any meaningful effort to define the word "location" in a manner that is suitable for such a task. Shall we compare the weather-events that occur inside a single city? But how can we do so in a fair manner, when we consider Jackson, MS - land area 290 square kilometers - against, for example, Sitka, Alaska - whose city limits include over 12,000 square kilometers? Is it even remotely meaningful to compare "number of tornados per municipality"? And what about tornado events that occur in the great swathes of "unincorporated" areas - events that occur but do not ever encroach on any city at all? Shall we count tornado events per registered place-name for all types of cultural and geographical feature? Each of these, in fairness, do have a specified single "location"... "not a state or county,"... but unfortunately, not all their boundaries are mutually-exclusive...

Among the many ways you could try to resolve these troubles, you could simply allow a researcher to aggregate the data, define a heuristic, and publish their summary results for you... and that is exactly what was described in the summary article linked in our OP's original question. For more details on that particular method, the scientists who did that work have a whole website: Severe Weather at the Iowa Environmental Mesonet, from Iowa State University, with fun polygon datasets for the geometrically-inclined reader.

Nimur (talk) 14:03, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed answer Nimur! I see my question wasn't specific enough. Let's say, how many times a year (or how many days a year) does the average resident of Jackson, Mississippi cower under his basement stairs? Is there data on this? For example I've found this map of Dallas which has a whole lot more tornadoes than I expected, but surely this doesn't add up to anywhere near 800 a year? And anyhow the whole dataset for last 12 months on the Iowa State university page [6] adds up to only 2k tornado warnings.

I'm confused on how common tornadoes are - how likely is an average American to experience one in his lifetime? For example the tornado article says "The United States has the most tornadoes of any country, nearly four times more than estimated in all of Europe, excluding waterspouts." That would be 300 tornadoes a year for us, yet I don't remember the last time I even heard that a tornado struck someplace here. 93.136.62.103 (talk) 16:24, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Again, number of warnings is going to be much higher than number of actual tornadoes. As for actual experiences, several touched down in my neighborhood about 3 years ago. All in a row. In about an hour. --Khajidha (talk) 16:36, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

For reference, my state (North Carolina) has had 336 tornadoes touch down in the last decade. That's about 34 a year. In an area a little larger than Greece.--Khajidha (talk) 16:51, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Wow, that's a lot! Raleigh area has 279 warnings [7] for that period (Jackson has 1032 - I wonder where that 8000 number came from). How many days a year do you have to shelter from such storms?

Interestingly I've found my country (Croatia, roughly the size of W. Virginia I've been told) listed as one of Europe's most tornadic [8] yet we actually don't get these things at all, I don't know where these people get their data. Apart from regular videos of panicking tourists fleeing the beach from innocent waterspouts (we get a ton of those) I can think of 3 things: 1) a storm hit in my city (1-1.5M ppl) and produced a tornado 30-40 years ago (this could be just an urban legend), 2) a few years ago newspapers reported a tiny tornado throwing around lawnchair and barbecues in a big storm (possibly just a rumor as no meteorologists were interviewed), 3) last year an extraordinarily strong waterspout came ashore at the seaside and ripped some trees and roof tiles [9] (EF0? - this happens there every several years maybe, but that's a waterspout coming ashore, not a true tornado). If we're the best Europe has to offer, then that claim about only "nearly four times" is nonsense. 93.136.45.191 (talk) 19:17, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

As a general tip: random internet blogs are poor sources for climate data, even if the author is an enthusiast.

Weather theory is extraordinarily complex, and the data archives that support true scientific study are also quite complicated. In view of how important a scientific understanding of our climate is to our wellbeing, it is very important to scrutinize your sources of information: when in doubt, avoid the blogs and commercial weather services - stick to peer-reviewed science publications!

Nimur (talk) 18:06, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Just noticed something that the original poster seems confused about. The 8000 warnings are not for Jackson, Mississippi, itself, they are warnings issued from that city's NWS office and cover a large surrounding area (including parts of several states). --Khajidha (talk) 20:28, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Why don't they ever seem to make maps of how many millitornados per 100 square yards each century or how many millennia between tornados inside that 10 yard square, where any EF1 winds in any part of that square is a tornado even if its center never came within a half mile of you? That's what I really want to know, and what I suspect someone who lives in an average size house really wants to know. The square should be orthogonal to the geographical coordinates, as roads and property lines are due north or east for the great majority of Tornado Alley residents. Per 10,000 square miles is more useful to tornado buffs wanting to conveniently chase them as often as possible. Does anyone try to see as many as they can per decade or lifetime with leaderboards and RAW radius or mileage-limited tornadoseeing leagues and geotimestamped photos? Those maps would be great for them. Like maybe you know you'll never compete with those Oklahomans if you stay in your hometown in Kansas so you seek a home more tornadoey but at an intersection of orthogonal fast roads but with long empty stretches to the northeast and southwest and east and west. Smarty move. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:47, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

What timing that I asked this question this week. I found out my city apparently had a tornado warning today [10]. Is ESTOFEX a reliable source? 93.136.70.168 (talk) 03:13, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

July 30

Countries playing their national anthems before space launches

I've noticed that NASA plays the US national anthem before launches (at least during their livestreams). Do other countries that launch spacecraft do the same as well? For example, do Russian livestreams for Soyuz launches play the Russian anthem, does ESA play the French and/or European anthems before Ariane and Vega launches, etc.? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 11:36, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

In Russia "Grass by the Home" ("Trava u doma") has been played before every launch at Baikonur Cosmodrome as an unofficial anthem of astronauts (as reported by Roskosmos, and in 2009 Roskosmos reportedly made it an official anthem of Russian astronauts). Brandmeister^talk 19:52, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Huh. Kind of reminds me of Robert Heinlein's The Green Hills of Earth.--Khajidha (talk) 23:27, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Blue whale and Argentinosaurus

According to Blue whale, "it is the largest animal known to have ever existed", "reaching a maximum confirmed length of 29.9 meters (98 feet)", but per Argentinosaurus its length estimates range from 30 to 39.7 metres (98 to 130 ft), meaning it was larger by length and not only among "land animals of all time". Should one of the articles or both be corrected? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 12:31, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Length and size are two different things. See Largest organisms. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:50, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

To support what Guy Macon said, Argentinosaurus may have been long, but that doesn't mean it was "bigger," since it could be long but comparatively skinny. Estimates on its mass range from 50 - 100 tons. Blue whales are more like 170 tons. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 14:30, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Turns out that Argentinosaurus wasn't the longest dinosaur. Supersaurus was slightly longer. (But blue whales are heavier than either one.)

--Guy Macon (talk) 14:59, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Given the large uncertainties in the lengths of those dinosaurs, in particular those of which the necks and tails were never actually found, I don't think we can say with any certainty which ones were or were not longer than a blue whale. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:12, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

This Britannica article says "[Argentinosaurus] was thought to have weighed 90 to 100 metric tons (99 to 110 tons)" whereas our blue whale article says that Antarctic females average 130 tons (118 metric tonnes). So still the biggest in terms of mass. Alansplodge (talk) 12:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Why is dew important for plants?

As far as I know it's possible for a plant to leave without dew (we have flowerpot in the kitchen...), then what's the rule that dew play in nature if it isn't necessary? I mean we have rain already and why do we need also dew? --ThePupil (talk) 15:45, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Here's one article on the subject.[11] House plants are in a controlled environment, while plants in the wild are at the mercy of nature. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:52, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

The tone of your question seems odd, like you're arguing to abolish the practice of dew. Our article does a good job of explaining "how" it forms, but as to the "why", see teleological argument. There is no "why". Dew happens, and plants and animals may make use of it or not. 64.235.97.146 (talk) 16:23, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Exactly. Dew is condensation, a simple physical process. It does not have a "role" and it cannot be said to be "needed" or "necessary" (or unnecessary, for that matter) in the sense the original poster is using. Plants may have various adaptations to dew, but that is a function of their biology evolving to fit the environment, not the environment filling some "need". --Khajidha (talk) 16:56, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

In arid and semi-arid regions or in a dry season, dew may be the main or only water resource for many plants, some of which can absorb moisture through their leaves.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 19:49, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

But again, that's a property and function of the plant, not the dew. --Khajidha (talk) 22:29, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Nevertheless, it's important to the plants that use it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:54, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, this goes to the question in the section title: "Why is dew important for plants?" --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:45, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

And as 64.whatever pointed out, that's not a good question. Some plants utilize dew, some don't. "How do some plants utilize dew?" would be a good question. --Khajidha (talk) 14:21, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Or through their roots. The spines and other structures on many cacti increase surface area, which among other things causes more dew to condense. The dew can then drip down to the ground and be soaked up. The spines themselves are highly-derived leaves with no stomata to absorb water. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:45, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

July 31

Lizard species identification

This photo of a lizard in a quite rare and unusual pose is being nominated for Featured Picture of Wikimedia Commons. I need help from a lizard expert to identify the species. Is it a sand lizard (Lacerta agilis)? StellarHalo (talk) 02:43, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Have you tried contacting the uploader (c:User:Сергій Мірошник)? --2606:A000:1126:28D:34C7:B325:D9B8:574 (talk) 03:25, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

(Warning: my Ukrainian is not best and definitely not a lizard expert :-) The first two words in the title are the animal's name. Uk wiki says ящірка прудка is indeed Lacerta agilis. The third word means "frozen" (as in "put your hands up"). 93.136.45.191 (talk) 03:51, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I placed identification request in an Israeli facebook group devoted to reptiles. It may be a good idea to place the request in other groups. אילן שמעוני (talk) 08:28, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I have posted a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles which seems to be reasonably active. Alansplodge (talk) 13:09, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

It seems there is an answer, from the said facebook group: [12], Viviparous lizard

אילן שמעוני (talk) 13:34, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Birds of a feather...?

In the context of avoiding predation, my own casual observation suggests that birds and insects in the open air are less likely than are fish in the open sea to use the strategy of social aggregation (i.e. flocking, shoaling) - is this true? If so, what might be the reason? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 11:18, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Lack of efficient predators in the air, for instance. Ruslik_Zero 11:47, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Also, more visibility in the air. Consider the problems faced by an ocean predator preying on schooling fish. Most of the time, no fish in sight. Occasionally, a large school with too many to catch and eat them all. The predator can't see schools unless they are close. Now move it to the air. The predator can see flocks of prey miles away. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:49, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

An exception is the European rabbit: "by living in groups, rabbits may reduce this risk because a foraging group can detect an approaching predator sooner (Bertram 1978), and each member of a group is less at risk of being singled out during an attack (Vine 1971)". More detail than you probably want is at Predation risk, cover type, and group size in European rabbits in Donana (SW Spain). Alansplodge (talk) 13:14, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

But do predators in the ocean use sight very often? My impression is that they don't. Dolphins, orca, etc. use echolocation at least to some extant, in the hunting of prey. Sharks use several sense other than sight, including electroreception, and famously have an exceedingly keen sense of smell. Matt Deres (talk) 22:25, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Links: Flocking (behavior) & Shoaling and schooling. Possibly somewhat relevant-ish articles: Collective animal behavior, Selfish herd theory & Aggregation (ethology) 2606:A000:1126:28D:CC33:9148:10E7:83BF (talk) 14:46, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

That selfish herd theory page is interesting. Compare this, from Selfish herd theory

"The basic principle governing selfish herd theory is that in aggregations, predation risk is greatest on the periphery and decreases toward the center. More dominant animals within the population are proposed to obtain low-risk central positions, whereas subordinate animals are forced into higher risk positions."

...with this from Muskox:

"Muskoxen have a distinctive defensive behavior: when the herd is threatened, the bulls and cows will face outward to form a stationary ring or semicircle around the calves. The bulls are usually the front line for defense against predators"

I believe that Elephants also react to predators by putting the largest bulls on the outside of the herd and the babies in the center. This may have something to do with the fact that the bulls are basically invulnerable against predators. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:33, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Looking at the selfish herd theory page, I notice that the species mentioned there don't seem to have the sort of larger, more powerful individuals that muskoxen or elephants do. No single individual (or even a small number of individuals) would be likely to be able to kill or run off a decent sized predator. Basically, rabbits or such do better to clump together pushing the weakest outward to be sacrificed to spare the herd, while elephants and such do better sending the biggest and baddest out to whoop the snot out of the attacker. Remember also that small animals tend to breed faster. Losing dozens of rabbits from a group would not take much time to replace, but losing one elephant calf puts a strain on the herd. --Khajidha (talk) 20:21, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I question the premise of the question. If I look at purely the open sky, mostly the birds I see are predators like hawks and vultures scanning the ground and flocks of non-predatory birds (ducks, geese, seagulls, starlings, etc.). Do insects also swarm to avoid predators? According to the news, you'll be able to hear the answer for yourself next year. Matt Deres (talk) 22:35, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

From the study of bird species on islands, with or without predators, with their mainland counterparts, there are indications that a lack of predators leads to less flocking. Mikenorton (talk) 10:36, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

What modern genera names are only a subset of what its name meant before Linnaeus?

Like Lacerta, there must be lizards outside that genus that the Ancients would call lacertae. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:44, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

For the common names for animals used in Classical Latin or Ancient Greek texts it is generally not known precisely which (group of) species they referred to. Possibly, there was not even any overlap. For example, the genus name Haliaeetus comes via Latin from Ancient Greek ἁλιάετος, which is commonly translated as “sea-eagle”, but LSJ thinks it may have referred to the Pandion haliaetus or western osprey, which belongs to a different genus, Pandion. Eagles are actually a rare sight in Greece and Turkey. That makes it impossible to answer the question with any reasonable confidence. Another consideration is that today many more species are known than occurred in the regions where Latin was spoken. Take Latin rana, meaning “frog”. Many species in the genus Rana occur only in Japan or the Americas, so can we meaningfully say that the ancient Latin term included them? Or take the urial in the genus Ovis; would the Romans, had they seen one, even have recognized it as being an ovis, “sheep”?  --Lambiam 17:43, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

So Ovis might be one of the genera that are supersets of the ancient common name and Haliaeetus may be one with no overlap, and there could be other genera that are Venn diagrams or identical circles, they don't all have to be subsets. Are there any Rana that look toady or otherwise not froggy? Did they even have a word for toad? If not then Rana probably is one but we'll never know for sure. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:25, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Why is 5 a good number of rockets for the Saturn V and "many more" and "burns kerosene" good for almost anything Soviet?

If a non-central first stage motor fails without damage to other parts can they keep the it from pointing to bad directions with tricks like vanes, at least for long enough to safely escape? How close to 100 percent of the central first stage motor's intended burn needs to happen to complete the Moon landing or Vostok/Voskhod/Soyuz mission? If it fails gracefully (is that possible?) What's the first difficulty that limits the maximum size of buildable rocket motors? Whether they'd have a practical and risk-averse use or not, what's the ultimate buildability limiter? Would the sound waves crack or unweld something or it'd have to be too thick from the square-cube law or what? If it has to be beefy enough to work 2 smaller engines with half the thrust might become lighter too despite the probable higher total surface area. Could the Soviet moon rocket with buttloads of liquid oxygen/kerosene motors be built today by NASA or Russian NASA (not that they want to) or is the chance of a bad motor preventing mission objectives still too high even for unmanned? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:04, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

SMW, I can dimly discern at least 7 separate questions without obvious simple answers, mixed with a good deal of questionable assumptions, in your semi-coherent ramble above. I'm not sure that it's easily addressable by a Ref Desk such as this rather than by, say, an extended discussion at some spaceflight-related discussion group. Do you want to try again with a more limited and rigorously defined question? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.132.105 (talk) 20:23, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

What caused the Saturn V first stage engineers to decide 5 rocket bells was a good amount but Soviet heavy rocket engineers to decide many was a good amount? (technically most of them were boosters ejected before stage 1 to save weight and thus stage zero if one must have a number but that's still a lot of simultaneous rockets).

2. If a rocket not on the central axis fails is it designed to try to counter the asymmetric thrust with movable aerodynamic surfaces and/or proper thrust settings on other rockets, at least long enough to escape?

3. If it has no countering asymmetric thrust function and only one rocket loses thrust but quickly and someone presses the abort button as soon as they detect the thrust loss/asymmetry will the crew live? Yes? No? Maybe?

4. In the Apollo 13 film the central rocket lost thrust and they just burned the others longer, if another Apollo's central rocket stopped burning suddenly how soon would it have to stop for the Moon landing to be cancelled?

5. Let's say Yuri Gagarin, how many percent of a normal burn would the central rocket need for him to orbit once?

6. What about reaching Mir? How soon could the central rocket cut off?

7. What are the most relevant practical engineering tradeoffs for more but smaller vs. less but more powerful?

8. What limits the ultimate power of a buildable rocket nozzle? If you wanted to orbit a satellite filled lead with an impractical Tsar Rocket with only 1 nozzle per stage just for showing off like the Tsar Bomb what would limit you first?

9. Is the Soviet N1 moon rocket reliable enough for commercial satellites if built again now? This was the ~0.1 Hiroshima scale explosion I think, too many rockets and parts to fail. It was early in the Space Age though. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:31, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

In answer to your Nos. 2 and 3, see Dramatic on-board video shows moment of Soyuz booster failure. Alansplodge (talk) 17:10, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

I can answer 8. The burning chamber and the nozzle experience extreme temperatures that requires both cooling solution (leading the cold fuel around) and specialized grafi-derevetives materials. It poses strict limit as to the maximum power a single engine can bear. אילן שמעוני (talk) 18:29, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Related to 3, the US manned rockets had a Launch Escape Assembly (LSA) for just such a contingency. (E.g: see diagram of Apollo command module) --2606:A000:1126:28D:2145:DDE9:39C1:3E55 (talk) 21:12, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

I am aware, I did not realize the Russian launcher was only 4 boosters though, at least for lighter payloads. I thought it was more. The Soviet Moon landing rocket was a lot though. Looks pretty Soviet chic with all those boosters. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:46, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

In response to your first question, I'm going to start by posing another question. Why do you think the US used 5 combustion chambers at all for the Saturn V first stage? Or the second stage? After all, the third stage only had one. The answer to your question isn't that the US thought 5 bells were great and the Soviets thought 30 was good. Neither thought either was good or better. They were solutions around technical limitations. The Saturn V needed a certain amount of thrust to do its job, and 5 F-1 engines could do the job. Instead of 5 engines, each delivering 1.5m lbs of thrust, why not have a single engine delivering 7.5m lbs of thrust? It turns out that is an incredibly difficult thing to do. You need powerful enough fuel turbopumps, engine cooling, and combustion stability in the "bell." These challenges get more and more difficult. Where early rockets, for example, dealt with high heat by building out of temperature resistant materials, eventually, the engine heat is enough that it will melt through anything we have. So, you start looking to other solutions, like regenerative cooling, but even that has its limitations. So, eventually, you decide "I can't make a 7.5m lbs thrust engine, so I'll settle for 5 engines with 1.5m lbs of thrust." Soviet rocket technology in the 1960s wasn't as advanced as that in the US, so they couldn't build an F-1 class engine. The engines they could build, like the NK-15, were more limited, and could only deliver about 380k lbs of thrust. So, you need more of them, including the weight of associated turbopumps and plumbing, which means you need more still as that's more added weight each time. So, you end up with 30 weaker engines. This problem never fully went away for the Soviets/Russians. Even after the N-1 failure, while they got good at building large tubropumps, they weren't as good at dealing with the combustion stability in large "bells." So, we end up with designs like the RD-107 and RD-170, which both featured single turbopumps driving multiple combustion chambers (4 in the case of the RD-107, and 2 in the RD-170). Again, this isn't because the Soviets thought "multiple combustion bells per turbopump is better," but rather "we can build large turbopumps, but we can't build equally large combustion bells." It's still better to have fewer turbopumps, if you can, because they are heavy. So, a single turbopump driving multiple combustion chambers is the solution with the technology available. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 02:55, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

August 1

Can a population be immunized by spreading a harmless engineered virus?

Instead of producing a vaccine against COVID-19, can we engineer a harmless virus to produce not just copies of itself but also of some of the proteins of COVID-19? One can then release the virus in the population and it would then cause the population to get immune against COVID-19. Count Iblis (talk) 19:58, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Since this sort of thing has never been attempted, you are asking for speculation, which is not what this desk is for. --174.89.49.204 (talk) 20:07, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

What is it about the refdesks that compels people to [A] make up rules that don't exist, and [B] try to control the behavior of other editors who aren't doing anything wrong? Many of the questions on the refdesks are about things that have never been attempted. You didn't complain when someone asked "Would it make sense to have a launch site, maybe even an electromagnetic one, on the peak of Olympus Mons on Mars, to save fuel?" That has never been attempted. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:35, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

We could also ask why does Wikipedia compel people to say that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a general web host provider. Reference desks are supposed to be reference desks, not general chat boards for opinions, predictions, debate, or original research (which actually are rules that do exist; see the top of this page). The fact that there are many inappropriate questions and answers on the reference desks does not mean we should have more. 85.76.65.201 (talk) 03:31, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

If you want those to be the rules, post an RfC and get the community to approve them. Don't simply make up rules and expect others to follow them. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:43, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Re: "which actually are rules that do exist; see the top of this page", see WP:LOCALCON. Nobody has ever tried to get the community to approve the rules at the top of this page -- no doubt because they know that in several areas they directly contradict existing policies such as WP:TPOC. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:51, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

This,[13] for example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:49, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

That is indeed a low quality post, but allowed under Wikipedia's current rules. The question is whether anyone can write an RfC that targets posts like that one without targeting good posts. "I know it when I see it" does not make for a good Wikipedia policy. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:43, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

We aren't supposed to speculate or make predictions. But if someone notable has speculated on something, and/or someone else notable has argued why that speculation is flawed, then we can point someone to that information. "Can we engineer a harmless virus to ... cause the population to get immune against [another virus]" sounds like something someone somewhere might have discussed, so seems to me to be a reasonable question to ask. (It also sounds like the sort of thing that would be a major ethical no-no, with the risk of serious problems if it goes wrong). Iapetus (talk) 09:15, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Some vaccines do use weakened viruses and that can lead to community spread. This is why oral polio vaccine was phased out in many countries. See Polio vaccine#Vaccine-induced polio. Rmhermen (talk) 20:42, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Any virus that can spread and induce an immune response cannot be harmless. The coronavirus itself is an example of this; deaths directly from viral infection are rare, but deaths from peoples' immune system overreactions are common. Abductive (reasoning) 23:14, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

This is similar to what is known as a viral vector vaccine, such as one of the leading contenders for an anti-Covid 19 vaccine, the so-called "Oxford vaccine" now in Phase III trials that has been created by Sarah Gilbert and her team at Oxford University. To quote from the article about it in this week's New Scientist (No. 3293, August 2020, pp8-9):

"The key component is DNA coding for a surface protein – which would normally trigger an immune response – from the virus you want to protect yourself against. Like a Trojan Horse, this is put inside the shell of an adenovirus that causes colds in chimpanzees, which delivers it to human cells, where the protein is made."

However, distributing such a "delivery virus" by person-to-person infection is not a good idea. Firstly, the delivery virus out "in the wild" could itself mutate, become more serious or deadly in its effects, and become an epidemic of its own. Secondly, those infected with the delivery virus (regardless of its "payload") become immune to it, so it can't be used on them a second time for either the same or a different payload. If it spreads by infecting the population as a whole, that delivery virus (and there aren't many suitable ones) becomes useless for future epidemics: if it's administered as a vaccine that doesn't spread to others, we know exactly who has received it, and therefore who we can – and can't – use it on in future. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.132.105 (talk)

Yes, and it should also be noted that most vaccines require one or more adjuvants in addition to the antigen(s) to provoke an immune response sufficient to generate immunity. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:49, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

August 2

Planet with Earth’s size, made entirely of radium.

Is such a planet theoretically ppssible, or would its gravity be too weak to hold it together, given how much energy it would generate?Rich (talk) 04:36, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

What element or elements does radium decay into? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:47, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

It can decay in more than one way depending on the isotope, but as far as I know, its end state is lead, although it’s frequently radon for awhile. Rich (talk) 05:09, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

The point being, if you started with pure radium, it wouldn't stay pure very long. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:23, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

A body in space can generate a huge amount of energy without overcoming gravity and flying apart. Example: the Sun. I suspect that such a planet would fairly quickly become a ball of glowing gas. Even if you pick areally low energy output per atom, most of that energy has nowhere to go. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:38, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Where would the radium planet come from? The half life of the longest lived isotope of radium is 1600 years (all the radium in nature comes from processes like uranium decay) and planets are generally believed to accrete from dust over megayear periods. If you somehow created a planet-sized sphere of radium in an instant, are you asking if the pressure at the center would be enough to cause a giant nuclear explosion? Hmm, interesting. I don't see anything in the radium article about radium being fissile but I don't know if that means it isn't. The ordinary radioactive decay would give off a huge amount of heat, let's see. If my math is right, the mass would be around 6e24 kg, comparable to the mass of Earth. So from the atomic mass and half life, you can figure out the decays/sec. The decay is alpha particles but oddly, the energy of the particles is not specified. I think that's a standard thing: maybe a CRC Handbook would have it? That would let you figure out the decay heat, and from that I guess the blackbody temperature using the Stefan-Boltzmann law. It's late now but I may try to figure out the numbers in the next few days. I'd appreciate if someone who knows more physics than I do could tell me if this method makes any sense. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 07:31, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Regarding the as to where you would get such a Radium planet given how slowly planets form, it is on Shelf 42B, right next to the spherical cows. Make sure that you approach Shelf 42B from the left; 42D contains the infinite planes and it takes literally forever to walk past the end of one of those.

That calculation seems like the right way to do it. The result will be slightly off because the surface of the radium planet would lose energy from the usual radium glow and from infrared as it became hotter an hotter, but I would be very surprised if those two together reached even 0.001% of the total energy. Eventually the radium would melt and then boil. That could change things a bit; is Radium gas (plus by that time it would have some Radon gas mixed in) transparent to the wavelength where Radium shines? And the surface area would get a lot bigger. I still think it would be a fraction of a percent compared to the total energy output. An interesting calculation would be the time. Does it take a millisecond to heat up to a gas ball or does it take a thousand years? --Guy Macon (talk) 11:18, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Alpha particle says: "Due to the mechanism of their production in standard alpha radioactive decay, alpha particles generally have a kinetic energy of about 5 MeV, and a velocity in the vicinity of 5% the speed of light." That can be used as a ballpark figure. A much more critical issue is the isotopic composition; I expect the results for pure ²²⁶Ra and pure ²²⁴Ra to be rather different. This source gives 4.6 MeV for ²²⁶Ra decay, while this source gives an alpha energy of 5.69 MeV plus gamma emission at 241.0 keV for ²²⁴Ra decay. But in terms of power (energy output per unit of time) the latter is orders of magnitude more powerful.  --Lambiam 12:40, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, thanks, yes I was assuming pure 226 since 224 has a much shorter half life. Guy, the radium in the center of the ball would be under very high pressure so it wouldn't boil so quickly: think of the Earth's inner core which is estimated to be at 5000+ kelvin and 3e6+ atm of pressure, and which is believed to be either solid, or a very viscous liquid. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 13:19, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Excellent point. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:55, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

By the way, the novel Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet (aka Assignment In Space with Rip Foster) is about the discovery of an asteroid made of pure thorium (useful as reactor fuel), and the logistics of getting it back to earth using nuclear bombs ala Project Daedalus as propellant. The book wasn't as bad as our article about it might make it sound. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 22:10, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

are prisoners in solitary confinement safer from covid than those in gen pop?

This is just a theoretical question--despite having made some crappy edits now and then, I'm not currently in prison. But I have to wonder about this. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 13:10, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Solitary confinement means that the prisoner is deprived of contact with other inmates and their loved ones. It does not mean they are totally isolated; in most jurisdictions they will still be allowed to see their lawyer. If they are subjected to a full body search by a prison guard after each visit by their lawyer,^[14] they may in fact be more at risk. So it is not possible to answer this as a theoretical question other than by, "it depends". As a statistical question, the data needed for analysis is lacking and is (almost certainly) not being collected for later analysis.  --Lambiam 08:49, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Can they read all the time? (most subjects, not just religion which is constitutional right many places) then eh so what but most prisoners are extroverts and would rather be at 24/7 risk of being stabbed for no reason by the semi-insane than be alone with a Britannica. The body search must be horrible but unfortunately necessary till they bother to be not sadistic and offer a radiational scanner, whatever can detect swallowed things and stuff with the least cancer risk, oh wait a body search can't detect swallowed things. Perhaps they could seal one of those talk through the glass things and put cameras that can't see them if they don't get too near the wall to prevent lawyer smuggling without letting anyone read their lips and not have to search at all? And of course some people in solitary confinement have no brain physiology to love anyone at all and would murder and rape without guilt if a good opportunity showed up i.e. ISIS. It might be a third or less (no idea) but for that subset of solitary fuck you. Talk to yourself if you're so bored. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:04, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Is this supposed to help the questioner find an answer to their question?  --Lambiam 17:46, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

You editorialized first, you know full well that a good chunk can't have loved ones, some are serial killers, some raped little kids etc. yet you wrote as if loved ones are assumed like a propagandist. You could've just put a (if they have any) there and it would've been scientific. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:55, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Are you sure you can't get loved ones in solitary if you're in for protection and not punishment for something you did or allegedly did or your security level (supermax, minimum etc)? That makes no sense. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:06, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

August 3

Wording in article Gravity

Why the sentence in Newton's theory of gravitation of article Gravity is "most modern non-relativistic gravitational calculations are still made using Newton's theory because it is simpler to work with and it gives sufficiently accurate results for most applications involving sufficiently small masses, speeds and energies." instead of "most modern non-relativistic gravitational calculations are still made using Newton's theory because it is simpler to work with and it gives sufficiently accurate results for most applications involving sufficiently small masses, speeds or energies."? Does it mean that at least the three prerequisites must be met simultaneously then Newton's theory can be applied? - Justin545 (talk) 05:49, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

It just means that Newtonian gravity is perfectly adequate except in some highly specialized applications. Unless you're measuring the defect in the orbital precession of Mercury or making fine adjustments to atomic clocks on satellites (and most people aren't) then Newtonian mechanics works fine. --Jayron32 06:24, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Mercury moves at low speed (compared with the speed of light) but has a large mass and large kinetic energy (if I understand correctly). According to the sentence, Newtonian gravity is not adequate to accurately predict Mercury's orbit since the mass and energy criteria are not met, isn't it? Because of the "and" in the sentence, 3 criteria (mass, speed, energy) must be ALL met (all of them must be small) or Newtonian gravity cannot give sufficiently precession, right? In other words, Newtonian gravity is inadequate for precisely calculating anything about Mercury because the mass of Mercury is not small in all cases (even if it has small speed and has small energy), right? - Justin545 (talk) 08:36, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

See Tests of general relativity#Perihelion precession of Mercury. It's the distance to the Sun that leads to a measurable deviation; essentially the gravitational attraction is close enough for deviations to just barely be noticeable with Mercury. It's very small, but real, on the order of 40 arcseconds per hundred years; given that an arcsecond is 1/1296000 of a revolution, we're talking a deviation of a few dozen ppm per 100 years. What's more impressive is not that GR is needed to explain the deviation, but that the deviation was measured in the 19th century. You're focusing too much on the individual words here. Newtonian gravity works in cases except where the values become large enough for the deviations between GR and Newton to show up in significant figures of whatever the tolerances of your measuring devices you need to use are. For you, dropping a ball on earth, and making measurements with a chronometer and a ruler, this is way out of the tolerances of your measurement, so use Newton. Even for the Earth-Moon system, Newton works fine in most cases. Look at the equation of gravity according to Newton: F = G * (m₁*m₁/r²). The only values that matter are m and r. G is a constant that just makes the units work out, so we can ignore it. The only times where General Relativity needs to be used is when 1) The values of m and r are extreme (large values of m and small values of r) and 2) Where relativistic effects significantly alter the values of m and r (in things like time dilation or length contraction, or mass-energy equivalence) and those values only show up at high speeds (which is the same thing as high kinetic energy) or high potential energy (high forces). Since gravitational force (potential energy) increases with high masses and short distances, that just the same as what I said at #1. If you're wondering how GR deals with these forces, it doesn't. It doesn't treat gravity as a force, it treats it as a warping of spacetime itself, and treats objects with a large mass at a close distance as though they are moving in straight lines at a constant speed through a distorted spacetime. There is no force of gravity in GR. This kind of warping of geometry is fantastically mathematically complex; it took Einstein something like 10 years to formalize General Relativity because he had to wait for people like Minkowski and Hilbert and Lorentz and the like to literally invent the mathematics that he needed to do the calculations right. So, if you want to do gravity calculations, you can either do this insanely complicated tensor calculations, or you can do simple algebra. If the difference between the two methods doesn't show up on your measuring devices, and you literally could not tell the difference between the two results in a real physical sense, then use Newton's equation. The various relativity equations only shows up at speeds close to the speed of light, and near very large masses. The reason why satellites need to correct for this is because they are at a different distance from earth than you are, so their clocks run at a slightly different rate than yours; on the order of a few ppm, which seems small but can amount to several meters in a day, and several kilometers over the course of a year. When you're using those satellites for doing things like guiding your car on a road, or guiding a bomb to its target, you don't want it to drift that much. --Jayron32 18:02, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Okay ... basically, I though every sentence in the article is supposed to be correct, so readers are not misled by the contents. Because I am not familiar with relativity and the conjunction looked odd to me, so I was trying to confirm it here. I would directly modify the article and correct the conjunction if it were confirmed to be wrong. Although the condition is that they need to be small, I didn't see an explicit statement is about how small should they be. Which may be the source of ambiguities where formulas and equations should kick in. - Justin545 (talk) 07:40, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

If your concern is in regard to grammar, then either wording is fine. One can be calculating speed and energy; or, one can be calculating either speed or energy. In either case Newtonian (non-relativistic) physics equations provide "sufficiently accurate results for most applications...". 2606:A000:1126:28D:E00A:A68D:43D6:44E1 (talk) 07:23, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, my concern is the conjunction. I want to know that it should be "and", "or" or "and/or"... - Justin545 (talk) 08:50, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

All three must be met. If the mass of an involved body is huge, the warping of spacetime may become non-negligible. Large differences in potential energy show up as gravitational time dilation not accounted for by Newton's Laws. And high speeds give rise to velocity time dilation. The last two are large enough that they have to be taken into account to make the GPS system work. So the appropriate conjunction is indeed “and”.  --Lambiam 08:34, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. - Justin545 (talk) 08:50, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Newton is good enough that no one thought anything was off till about 2 centuries of good telescopes. Degenerate stars need relativity for short term naked eye stuff. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:22, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

...Nobody dared to raise a concern about the Oxford comma? Nimur (talk) 17:28, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Earlobes and figure

Recently, I have noticed that nearly any person with attached earlobes I have seen either in real life or in the media was slender, as a matter of fact. Now, as I was unable to find any pertaining scientific evidence on this issue, is there anybody here who can explain if there possibly could exist a corresponding link between earlobe shape and bodily figure (apart from the mere fact that attached earlobes are a recessive genetic trait, of course)?--Hildeoc (talk) 09:30, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I've never heard of such an association, and the first person who came to my mind with attached earlobes (an old acquaintance of mine) is chubby bordering on obese. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 09:53, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Earlobes are either attached to the side of the head, or detached and only connected to the ear itself. Yes, free earlobes are the dominant trait while attached earlobes are the recessive trait. Researchers have looked at 34 genetic markers that influence earlobe type. This gives references. 84.209.119.241 (talk) 13:05, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

All of them are "attached". I've never seen one yet that was floating in space. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:44, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

^{See V.vGogh. 84.209.119.241 (talk) 20:36, 3 August 2020 (UTC)}

Unfortunately, Van Gogh didn't have Jesus around. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:27, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

You've never seen an astronaut's earlobes, then? --47.146.63.87 (talk) 21:48, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Codeine, promethazine, and CYP2D6

Working through some older edit requests, but I don't know what to make of this one at Talk:Lean (drug)#Semi-protected edit request on 21 July 2020. The article states that promethazine induces CYP2D6, which doesn't seem to be true ([15]). As I understand it, CYP2D6 turns codeine into morphine. So does promethazine inhibit CYP2D6, meaning that less CYP2D6 can metabolize codeine, so there's more of that in the bloodstream, making people feel more high? But I thought morphine makes people feel high? I would appreciate it if someone can also take care of the edit request, but I've been thinking about this one for a while that I need to know the answer too. This is not what I studied in college! ◢  Ganbaruby!  (Say hi!) 13:49, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Codeine is itself inactive; it's a prodrug. It's converted by the liver (by the CYP2D6 enzymes in liver cells) into morphine, which is of course active. This conversion happens slowly, which makes the effects of codeine different from those of directly administering morphine. And co-administration of drugs (in this case promethazine) often means they interact with each other, which can lead to different effects from when the drugs are administered by themselves. If promethazine inhibits the activation of codeine, that generally means the blood concentration of the active drug will be lower. It also often means the duration of effect will be longer, since the body is metabolizing the drug ("clearing it out") more slowly. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 21:46, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

August 4

Thermal treatment of meat, chicken and vegetables - what is the end result of microscopic changes?

That's what I would like to know. What happens if you boil such foods for half an hour. AboutFace 22 (talk) 00:31, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Protein denaturing for one. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:45, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

In the traditional recipe for carbonade flamande (a beef stew), tough, dry, and sinewy cuts of meat such as foreshank are simmered for hours (see Simmering#Dutch and Flemish cuisine). This denatures specifically the elastin and collagen that bundle the muscle fibres together, so that the cooked meat can easily be separated into threads. If you boil such meat at a higher temperature, other proteins form clumps as they denature, making the meat even tougher. Something similar is true for fibrous root vegetables and many kinds of beans. Simmering breaks down the pectin (not a protein), making the cell walls leaky and thereby the veggies soft, up to mushy. Adding a bit of baking soda to the water speeds up the process.  --Lambiam 09:21, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Precipitation of seawater carbonate by enzyme

@Graeme Bartlett: would [16] or [17] be more useful for polymer feedstock? EllenCT (talk) 03:17, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Both of these articles are making carbonate salts, first one is making sodium carbonate, and the second, I don't know, but would be a carbonate too. Inorganic carbonates are not useful for making polymers. To make polymer feedstocks, the carbonate needs to be reduced. Perhaps to methanol, ethylene glycol, ethylene or vinyl chloride. So it may have to have some electrolysis going on. Have you checked out our article on carbonic anhydrase? It is speeding up conversion of carbon dioxide to bicarbonate ions. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:19, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

cradle cap

is cradle cap the same thing as seberrhoeic dermatitis? If you have cradle cap as baby does that mean it will stay with you lifelong does it become seberrhoic dermatitis? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.219.66.131 (talk) 12:28, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Why does someone using a lawnmower outside my house seemingly cause interference on my TV?

Asked by Willy turner (talk) 13:30, 4 August 2020 (UTC)