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January 15

Involuntary movement in the face

Sometimes I get involuntary small movements on my face, usually either near my eyes or lips. They feel like one small muscle is flexing at its own will. What is this called? Lapinmies 00:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Try tic. --69.154.179.63 01:05, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Technically it is a fasciculation rather than a tic. The distinction is a fine one. alteripse 03:18, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it's just a twitch? Twitches are common, and happen when the muscles are tired. -- Daverocks 10:29, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

malnutrion

Are you looking for malnutrition? If you need spelling help, please use Google or dictionary.com next time. --AySz88^-^ 03:25, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it's a badly ionised neutron. DirkvdM 09:19, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ships

Why do ships float? Can you provide data about ships such as cruise liners - weight, volume, etc? Thank you, in advance, for your assistance.

Robert Bost

The float because of Archimedes' principle. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 03:12, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See also List of cruise ships for info on tonnage, etc. Johntex\^talk 03:30, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ethidium bromide

Can ethidium bromide really change your DNA? (I heard this mentioned on a rerun of ER.) The article mentions that it's mutagenic, but it doesn't go into specifics. What would be the effect of exposure?

Ethidium bromide binds to the DNA which can cause mutations when cells divide. Since the surface of your skin is dead, the chance of a single exposure of dilute EtBr causing any harm would be minimal. However people working with concentrated EtBr might be at more risk. Concnetrated EtBr can also cause acute poisioning.--nixie 07:33, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ethidium bromide is an intercolating agent. This means that the ethidium bromide molecule (which is mainly flat) can inset itself between two DNA bases. As said above, this can lead to errors when the DNA is replicated during cell division. So, the problem is not that your current DNA is being "changed", it is that new copies of your DNA would contain errors. This could lead to serious problems, such as cancer. When working with ethidium bromide, one should always wear latex gloves and avoid any contact with skin, eyes, or any other part of the body. Johntex\^talk 07:38, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's very bad advice, in both cases. EtBr can penetrate the skin, and also latex gloves. If you're in direct contact (or risk direct contact) with it you should wear nitrile gloves. At the labs I've visited where EtBr is in use (electrophoresis), they've restricted its use to a single room, in which nitrile gloves must be worn at all times, nothing should be touched without gloves and nothing not strictly necessary should be brought either in or out. --BluePlatypus 17:09, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bigfoot movie

??

This?

There's been numerous films involving big foot. I little more detail would help towards identifying the one you're thinking of. - 82.172.14.108 13:11, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Try Harry and the Hendersons. User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:02, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Laundry balls

How do laundry balls work?

See this article at HowStuffWorks.com. And the newly created article on the Downy ball. Dismas|^(talk) 15:11, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aha Dismas, so this is where you lurk for Newpage ideas. ;-) hydnjo talk 19:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the questioner is probably not referringto those, but to the plastic balls that replace detergent, (one brand is called "eco-balls")http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_007b.html or http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/household-products/eco-balls/1003126/ in my experience the answer to the question "how do they work?" is "not very well". The get rid of dirt but not smells like stale smoke. Jooler

The remarkable truth is that a good washing machine working with clean, hot water (not too hard) will get unstained clothes to be pretty clean without soap, laundry balls, or deep magicks. Remember that a normal spin and wash cycle puts your clothing through a half hour or so of shaking and wringing using two full tubs of water; you can pull quite a bit of dirt out that way.

Laundry balls take advantage of this fact. The amusing claims [1] about 'paramagnetic force', 'far infrared electromagnetic waves', 'a concentrated fluid that has been treated with specific naturally occurring high frequency fields', 'structured water', and so forth are just so much nonsense designed to part you from fifty to seventy-five dollars for an inert lump of plastic (and sometimes metal). A marginal improvement over plain water might be seen because the ball bouncing about in the washing machine tub can act as a beater that provides a bit of added scrubbing action. The Straight Dope neatly summarizes a study by Consumer Reports: "...you can get equally good results tossing your kid's Koosh ball in the washing machine...".

As Jooler notes above, the balls do just fine with regular mildly soiled clothing—all that stuff will come out with extensive water rinsing and mechanical action, balls or not. Removing stains, smells, and greasy stuff takes a surfactant–good old-fashioned soap–and it's unsurprising that the laundry ball would fall down here. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:06, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Biodiesel and Ethanol

What is the difference between biodiesel and bioethanol, or is bioethanol a type of biodiesel?

Bioethanol is, well, ethanol - the stuff that makes you do stupid things if you drink too much vodka (or any other alcoholic drink). It's produced by yeast causing fermentation. It's called "bioethanol" because you can also produce ethanol chemically from petroleum. Biodiesel are processed vegetable oils extracted from crops like sunflower oil, rapeseed and so on. Oils are long-chain hydrocarbons. Ethanol is used as a substitute for gasoline, whereas biodiesels are used to replace diesel fuel. The other difference is that the net energy return of biodiesel from temperate-climate crops is reasonable (but not great); the net energy return from ethanol made from grain or corn is very, very marginal (you need to burn almost as much fuel as you get from the process). Ethanol made using some newer processes, or from sugar cane, doesn't suffer this problem. Read the articles for more information.--Robert Merkel 12:23, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That would be the articles Ethanol fuel and biodiesel. Rmhermen 19:52, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why does bandwidth cost money?

As an end user, you will be buying bandwidth from a supplier who is buying the bandwidth, and selling it to you at (they hope) a profit. What you pay also covers adminstrative costs, such as the cost of sending you bills, and their own electricity bills. They in turn buy the bandwidth from someone else who is trying to make a profit. Ultimately, bandwidth charges become rather more complicated, when you arrive at the people who actually put in the wires and equipment; they are charging a fee for bandwidth to pay for the cost of running wires and buying equipment, and the smaller ongoing costs of maintenance and electricity, and (they hope) eventually cover the money they invested and make a profit. Notinasnaid 11:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You could similarly ask how come public highways cost money to build. All infrastructure has expenses to build and maintain, and the organizations that do this work need to be recompensed somehow for their efforts. User:AlMac|^(talk) 09:04, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

time

is it true that time is slowing down since last year??

Err, no. No it isn't. However, see leap second for the reason behind making the year slightly longer now and then. GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 13:47, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a meaningless question as it would have to be qualified by asking what time could possibly slow down relative to. It can only be measured against itself. It's a bit like asking whether length is getting longer. However, there have recently been controversial suggestions that the speed of light, which is considered a fundamental constant, might vary. --Shantavira 14:30, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

While time isn't slowing down -- the earth is. Since our system of time is tied to the length of an Earth day, and since the earth's rotation is very slowing 15 microseconds a year, we needed to add an extra second every once in a while to realign the two. Why is the rotation slowing? Because of the moon: read more at Moon#Orbit and Moon#Earth & Moon. --Quasipalm 17:27, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

cpu's

how do the following technologies differ: Intel dual core cpu, intel prescott cpu, AMD athlon cpu, AMD semprom cpu and 64bit cpu

Dual-core means basically two processors on the same chip. Prescott is Intel's code name for a specific family of Pentium 4 processors. Athlon and Sempron are AMD's names for larger families (Sempron is generally cheaper and slower than Athlon). 64-bit refers to a different processor architecture that uses 64 bit addressing, so more than 4G of virtual memory can be used. —Keenan Pepper 19:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

cryrtals

crystallization processers

You mean Crystallization processes? What about them? GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 14:46, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

computer science projects

Where is artificial intelligence used, in businesses, industry or manufacturing?please expand

from julie

This does look very much like a homework question. Can you tell us otherwise, Julie? Notinasnaid 14:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nowhere. True artificial intelligence does not exist yet. Some manufacturers may want you to believe that their product is 'intelligent' but that's just marketing bull. Tell your teacher that. In those exact words, please. And then report back the result if you will. Is that enough expansion? :) DirkvdM 09:29, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dirk, that is unfair to the many commercial products that are the results of AI-related research. Some of the links off the artificial intelligence article may help; I'll even give a couple of big hints: expert systems, and fuzzy logic. --Robert Merkel 12:14, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The reason for my remark is that the term 'intelligence' is being misused in what is called artificial intelligence. Fuzzy logic is somewhat on the right track. And then there is this professor at the University of Uppsala, I believe, who sort of has the right idea. But expert systems are most definitely not intelligent. Pure intelligence can start with nothing but some general rules of how input can be processed to create a world view, which can then be used to survive in the real world. All animals have some a priori knowledge about how to deal with reality to give them a head start. Humans have less of this (babies are born almost helpless) and focus more on the intelligence bit. But a system that is simply preprogrammed and has at most a very limited ability to learn is most definitely not intelligent. And those 'intelligent' computer games are really a laugh. Hell, they don't even have a possibility to experiment, a basic requirement of intelligence. How else can one learn as an independent being? DirkvdM 19:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and check out jpgordon's reply in the homonymous thread above. DirkvdM 19:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

True. Making human-like "artificial intelligence" has proven exceedingly difficult ot do. But I just want to add that that's not because the people who have tried are dumb. A lot of brilliant people have spent decades on these kind of problems, and have come up with many useful things. But passing the Turing test, for instance, is much, much harder than people thought it would be. --Robert Merkel

Biohazard

What is the biohazard symbol meant to represent? smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 14:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to this article, it was originally designed to be "memorable but meaningless". —David Wahler (talk) 15:07, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

David just got in before me with that. To give the obvious answer, it represents a biological hazard. The colors yellow and black are often used to symbolize hazards, even in nature, so they have become the norm. The circles suggest to me expanding spheres of influence. --Shantavira 15:16, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is it is graphically derived from the radiation warning symbol, which was created in 1946 to look like a radiating atom. --Fastfission 15:28, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting article. I'm impressed at how they actually did surveys to pick the least "associative" symbol they could find. --BluePlatypus 16:51, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oddly, I just noticed a resemblance to a cell after a couple of divisions. I don't know if it was in some way intentional (by the sounds of it not). smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 17:36, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

computer sciences

What are the future trends for artificial intelligence?

Who could know for sure? See our article on artificial intelligence, which discusses where we are now, where people think we are going, and where people have imagined we could end up. --Fastfission 15:34, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why not just put all your homework questions in one entry? --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:46, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Drivers for wireless cards

My girlfriend has an old Windows 2000 laptop with no wireless capability. I have a wireless card (PEAK Wireless; IEEE802.11b CardBus PC Card). However, her laptop can't find a driver for it. I've searched everywhere online for 'Peak wireless drivers', but can't find anything. Is there any other way of getting her computer to recognize the card, or a better online driver repository? My computer, which I assume has the driver, is busted, so that's out.

Thanks! — Asbestos 16:07, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Try their homepage, under "Support" and then "Downloads". --BluePlatypus 16:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

- Yay! I have no idea why I couldn't find that before. Thanks! — Asbestos 16:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

kbps

i have subscribed 2 a 56kbps internet connection but when i look at the connection speed it is usually between 49kbps and 50kbps .am i being cheated out of 6-7 kbps???--212.72.3.57 17:17, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you mean it's a dialup connection. In practice you never get all 56k; depending on line conditions (the distance and quality of wiring between your home and the digital modem in the telephone company's office). In addition, some countries (such as the UK) clamp the actual connection at 53k (I'm not sure why; some interference issue perhaps). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:25, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

i meant a dailup connection but why does it--212.72.3.57 18:17, 15 January 2006 (UTC) happen[reply]

The wires between you and your Internet Service Provider are not perfect. they have electrical resistace and static, which degrade the signal and cause a loss in data flow. --Shanedidona 18:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC) thnx 4 clarifying[reply]

The one of the biggest causes of degradation to signals on a POTS telephone line is due to branches and joins in the cable. An older cable is more likely to have been patched and joined in this manner (the cables in many houses and apartment buildings are often as old as the building itself). Whenever a signal crosses a join between two conductors a proportion of it is reflected back from the join (in much the same way as your reflection in a double-glazed window shows multiple images of you). Telephone engineers even have a tool that puts a special "ping" tone down a line and listens for the reflections - based on the timing it can tell you how many there are and roughly how far along the line each one is. Because of this phenomenon you'll often find that you get better analog modem and DSL speeds on newly installed telephone lines than on the ancient one that your grandparents had Alexander Graham Bell himself install. Similarly some long phone lines (for folks who live far from the phone company's offices) have (or had) loading coils; these coils help voice transmission, but impede DSL. In some places it's possible to order a "clean, unconditioned pair" from the phone company, which is a fresh length of copper without all the joins and coils on it. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Add to that a FCC limit on transmission frequencies which is well below 56k. --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:48, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the limit is 53 kbs. --Shanedidona 23:20, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

genetics, bird sexing

I am an amateur bird breeder, who is in contact with other bird owners and breeders, I desperately want to learn out to identify weather they are male or female, I have bought microscopes from hobby shops, but I can't find material, on what I should be looking at, or the strength of the microscope. I know it is identified through blood. Please, tell me how I can do this myself. Thank you very much. birdbrain252000@yahoo.com (birdbrain)

A quick google yielded:

Testing labs like [2][3][4] which will determine sex from blood, feathers, or eggs for $18-25.
Try joining an advanced birding list group if you are not already on one and ask if anyone has home lab methods: [5]. To subscribe to list:listserv@listserv.arizona.edu This list is described as "Discussion about highly difficult bird identification issues, mostly related to North America. subscription message: subscribe BIRDWG01 Your Name"

Good luck. alteripse 18:32, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since adult birds usually look quite different depending on the gender, I am guessing you are asking about baby birds ? StuRat 09:17, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

error message

im getting this weird error message on my comp persistently

"iexplorer caused an invalid page fault in module kernel32.dll at 017f:bff76843 registers eax=007101d0 cs=017f eip=bff76843 eflgs=00210246 ebx=007101d0 ss=0187 esp=00710000 ebp=00710018 ecx=0071009c ds0187 esi=8179f5c0 fs=457f edx=bff76855 es=0187 edi=007100c4 gs=0000 bytes at cs:eip: ff 75 08 ff 55 18 83 c4 10 64 8f 05 00 00 00 00 stack dump 007101d0 007100e0 0071009c 007101d0 bff76855 007101d0 007100ac bff87fe9 007100c4 007101d0 007100e0 0071009c bff76855 00710288 8179f5c0 0080e58c" this problem is not confined 2 only i explorer but almost anyprogram i open i have a windows 98(second edition)and a petium 3 prcessor pls tell me what my problem is and how 2 rectify it on my own

There is a bug in some library or driver. I think an "invalid page fault" is the same thing as a segmentation fault, in which case it could be many different things. Try switching to Linux? —Keenan Pepper 19:46, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Try switching to Linux? :-) You took the words right out of my mouth.--◀Puck^talk▶ 20:12, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But in the interests of trying to be helpful, you might try starting in safe mode to see if you encounter the same errors. If not it may be the result of some program running in the background while you are in normal mode. If I remember correctly, Windows 98 has a thing called MSConfig that allows you to remove items from your start up sequence without having to actually open regedit. I would suggest removing everything from start up and then seeing if your system is more stable. If you have to run Windows you should probably upgrade to Windows 2000 if not Windows XP. They aren't all that wonderful, but compared to Windows 98 they are more stable and reliable.--◀Puck^talk▶ 20:19, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It can be anything, including bad CPU fan, bad memory, bad power supply, a large number of other potential hardware problems, and a broken Windows installation, which can be caused by normal cruft acumulation, a virus, or spyware. I'd recommend running a memory checker (like memtest86+), an antivirus, a spyware checker, and seeing how well it runs a CD-based Linux distribution such as Knoppix. If the tests all show the hardware is good, it might be a good idea to reinstall Windows. --cesarb 22:36, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, thanks for the tip on memtest86+, I've always needed something like that that wasn't tied to a particular hardware vendor. Good lookin' out.--◀Puck^talk▶ 23:01, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RF Channel Selection

On some TV's why were channels 3 or 4 choosen as the channel to turn to for VCR/DVD operation?

The channel isn't chosen by the TV, it's the frequency produced by the RF modulator inside the VCR or DVD player. I'm not sure why they chose that channel, though. Night Gyr 20:45, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I seem to recall it's because very few places have both a channel 3 and a channel 4 broadcast, so at least one of those would be available. --jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 21:28, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Evolution

Are there any proofs or signs about wheather we humans as a species have evolved over the period of the recorded history? around 6BC-present day.

Recorded history goes back a bit further than that-- maybe back to 2000-3000 BC depending on your criteria. I can think of at least some indirect evidence for at least one evolutionary change. I think there have been changes in the population frequency of genes conferring resistance to certain widespread diseases during that time. I suspect there are others but don't know any others off the top of my head. alteripse 21:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Humans have larger brains and longer lifespans. They are, on average, taller and fatter. The fatness may be from diet, but no diet is going to make you taller. Also look at the Olympic sports. If humans were not evolving in any way, the records would not continue to be broken. If you are religious and believe that every human came from just one man and one woman, then you have to look at the evolution of the different races from those two. African's hair handles heat better than the northerners (like the Vikings). However, the thin lips of the northerners handles the cold better than the Africans. You go through every racial difference and see how it is well-suited for the race's natural environment - that is evolution. --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not true that no diet is going to make you taller. There is a good correlation between nutrition and height. E.g., compare average heights of North and South Korea. Records continue to be broken because continued improvements in nutrition. Also read Human_height#Determinants_of_growth_and_height --deeptrivia (talk) 00:05, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I should have stated that the potential for height is genetic. According to everything I've read, the average human height has increased about 4 inches since the early 1800s. Quick google: [6] [7] [8] That is just the first 3 hits. I would happily be incorrect if there are studies that show humans on average are getting shorter. I just haven't seen anything to support that view. --Kainaw ^(talk) 01:32, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are many studies demonstrating short-term (1-4 generations) fluctuations in both directions. The most well documented are those that show as much as an inch or more height gain in a single generation with immigration and better nutrition. This is not evolution, this is nutrition, and can be reversed with a famine. No one is disputing secular height trends (although they are more complex and bidirectional than you suggest) but that they do not represent genetic changes in the populations and hence have nothing to do with evolution. alteripse 01:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I also have to disagree with Kainaw. There is no evidence that the genetic height potential of humans has changed in recorded history. Heights are excruciatingly sensitive to environmental variables and can change either direction in a generation. This has nothing to do with evolution. alteripse 00:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly, Olympic records prove nothing about evolution. In the 100+ years since the modern games began, there have been many improvements in the way athletes are selected and trained, not to mention a larger population to select them from in the first place.

Above, someone mentioned genes for disease resistance. That would be a more promising area. When two separated populations of humans meet, each one can catch diseases from the other. If a large fraction of one population is killed but some are resistant, you would expect the descendants of the survivors to be resistant today. That would qualify as evolution. I don't know if there has been research to confirm any examples of this, though.

--Anonymous, 05:38 UTC, January 16, 2006

One wellknown example of this is Population history of American indigenous peoples#Depopulation from disease --WS 14:28, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Red hair has developed fairly recently. --Black Carrot 07:14, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Funny how this is used to push a political view (comparing North and Sout Korea). Within one country there are differences in height depending on the income. At least, this has been found in the Netherlands, of all places. And I suppose it would be stronger where income differences are greater, ie in more heavily capitalist countries. DirkvdM 09:55, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, lactose tolerance might be a trait that's been selected for in western populations. Morwen - Talk 10:07, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There have been two very important brain gene mutations in recorded history. The populace that got them, quickly killed the rest of the world, so they became common. I think there was one 60,000 years ago, which gave rise to art (cave paintings), and a spatial one (engineering) about 10,000 years ago. This is just from a decaying memory of a recent article. You might be able to find the references. --Zeizmic 13:38, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

DirkvdM: I don't see how deeptrivia's statement was "pushing" any political view. The people of North Korea are less well-nourished than the people of South Korea. That's not political, it's a fact. Given that they have the same genetics and similar diets, this would be the most reasonable explaination of the difference in average height. By comparison, your statement (South Korea having a less even distribution of wealth, and thus greater variance in height) seems much more speculative and political to me. The few communist countries on this list (China, Vietnam, Laos) fail to impress me in that respect. But in any case, even if you're right, it doesn't invalidate deeptrivia's point, since the average (statistical expectation value) and the spread (statistical variance) are unrelated properties, at least for a bell curve, which I'd assume the population height to follow. --BluePlatypus 19:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I meant, if examples abound in our own capitalist societies, why pick one in a distant country that 'very coincidentally' has to do with 'communism' (really socialism, but that's a different issue). There has to be an intention here. Actually, this introduces many more variables, thus obscuring what is probably the main cause for differences in height (even more than, say, 'race' - which is also a misnomer).

By the way, I'm not criticising Deeptrivia. I assume he's been indoctrinated as much as me and just came up with an example that he has been exposed to, which is only human. To escape this indoctrination one has to think for oneself, which isn't as easy as it sounds. The basic info is out there, one just has to work at it and filter out the bullshit, possibly reading between the lines of the propaganda channels. I've worked at this for years (as I gradually became more aware of my indoctrination) and I feel I've only scratched the surface. DirkvdM 07:40, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Or, perhaps you've accustomed yourself more and more to interpreting things that way, to the extent of seeing things which aren't there. As Freud said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". Korea may not be so 'distant' an example (it's relative to geography). And I disagree, it is a quite good example which elimates many variables, for instance ethnical variations. Both Koreas are some of the most (if not the most) ethnically and culturally homogenous nations in the world. That excludes most of the dietary and genetic factors. (And as a political sidenote: I see nothing either communist nor socialist about North Korea. All I see is one of the harshest dictatorships in the world, with no ideological justification from Marx or the Workers Movement.) --BluePlatypus 20:44, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whichever the politics may be, the point is that they're completely different between the two countries, in load sof respects. And indeed one cannot put political schemes in nice groupings. So the only thing that is compared is the politics of those two countries. For any more general conclusions there are way too many variables. Which leaves the question why this example is chosen to find a cause for differences in height. Like I said, it can't be a coincidence that one of the two happens to be a so-called 'communist' country (which represent about 1% of the countries in the world). My example of differences within one country (and indeed one city) is a much better eliminator of variables. It's income that determines height. And lifespan, for that matter (also a finding in the Netherlands). DirkvdM 08:41, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Take a look at diseases like AIDS, Epidemics, Plagues. I think there is clear evidence that once upon a time various diseases did not occur, did not exist, then here they are causing all kinds of chaos. If you do not believe that evolution is going on in the interaction between humans and diseases, then where did they come from ... were they delivered to us by little green men in UFOs? User:AlMac|^(talk) 09:09, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, logically, if there is no such thing as evolution, and life forms spring into being out of nowhere and have a tremendous effect on the course of human events, that must be proof of divine intervention. God's just gotten tired of fire and brimstone. Of course, if there's such a thing as divine intervention, that means that evolution isn't real. That's called having no loose ends. --Black Carrot 23:25, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

physics

what is a pendulum

Presumably, it is a pendulum. To search Wikipedia for articles, type the word into the search box on the left side of your screen. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:55, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Energy Conserveation

I know I have asked many questions with this title, but what is gravitational redshift and why doesn't it violae energy conservation? Thanks 216.209.153.167 22:26, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See gravitational redshift. To be brief and a bit sloppy, the photons are moving from a region of lower gravitational potential to a region with higher potential energy; in order for energy to be conserved, the photons lose energy and are redshifted. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:36, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Put in a very simplistic way, they try to escape the pull and get stretched out in the process. DirkvdM 09:58, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are Cheeses made the same way as they were a hundred years ago?

(no question)

Do you mean, "Is cheese made from curdled milk?" Yes. Do you mean, "Is cheese made by poor dirty children while the father went out hunting for meat and the mother was out plowing the fields?" No, not really. --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:57, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As for production methods, some cheeses are artisanally produced in small batches using traditional techniques but many others are factory mass produced. But they are all still (moldy, acid-filled, bacteria-infected, depending on the style) old milk. Our article is quite good on this. Rmhermen 00:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note that now, in addition to real cheese, which remains widely available, there is also something called "artificial cheese food product", like the Kraft singles sold in the US. These are made primarily from soybean oil, not milk, so can't legally be called "cheese". StuRat 09:25, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You beat me to it, but I can still add the link you omitted: processed cheese. I suppose that in the Netherlands, the word 'cheese' (or, rather, 'kaas') can not even be used, because that would still suggest it is cheese. I'm not even sure if it is sold here at all (this is cheese country after all). DirkvdM 10:04, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yea, I somehow doubt if they would allow such an abomination in any country known for cheese production. StuRat 11:44, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are a bit wrong there. There is in fact no soybeans in Kraft singles. Processed cheese is still made of milk. The ingredients for Kraft singles are: "KRAFT SINGLES KRAFT: MILK, WHEY, MILKFAT, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SALT, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, SODIUM CITRATE, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, SORBIC ACID AS A PRESERVATIVE, APOCAROTENAL (COLOR), ANNATTO (COLOR), ENZYMES, VITAMIN D3, CHEESE CULTURE." Rmhermen 02:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I remember reading "soybean oil" off a processed cheese ingredients list, perhaps it was one that's "fat free". StuRat 17:27, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't shout. DirkvdM 07:50, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, that was a cut-n-paste original, not my emphasis. Rmhermen 15:39, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly, the origin of processed cheese was simply leftover cheese. Kraft got the idea when working in a grocery, where he was bothered by the waste of all the hard bits and scrapings off cheese, as it was sold at the time from big wheels the grocer cut himself. He figured out a way to melt them down and stabilize them chemically to produce processed cheese. - Dharmabum420 23:27, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Medicine

Many drugs such as atropine and digoxin are isolated from plants. Why are these drugs regulated by the FDA and St John's wort or saw palmetto are not?

If you were cultivating them for profit, they possibly might. I don't think it regulates wildlife. Also regulating the processing (ie. turning the plants into the drugs) is more enforcable than regulating the plants themselves. Elle _{vécut heureuse} ^{à jamais} (Be eudaimonic!) 23:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More to the point -- those things aren't sold as drugs, but as dietary supplements, which are regulated as foodstuffs. --jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 00:26, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is straightforward and involves the legal difference between drugs and dietary supplements. A drug makes a claim of therapeutic efficacy and is subject to the requirements of the FDA for proof of safety and efficacy. A dietary supplement is subject to (relatively) much lower standards of purity and truthful labeling, and cannot make claims of therapeutic efficacy. A manufacturer who wants to market a substance can decide which type of marketing is likely to be most profitable. This depends on many factors, such as the obtainability of patent protection and the likelihood that a demonstration of therapeutic efficacy would increase the sales and allow a higher price. Typically the manufacturer will opt for dietary supplement status if the substance is not patentable (like a raw plant extract) or he has no confidence that efficacy will be demonstrable by affordable clinical trials. Digoxin is actually a molecule copied from the active ingredient in foxglove but is not identical to the old digitalis preparations. I think atropine is the manufactured active ingredient of belladonna, but the pharmaceutical product has not been extracted from plants for many decades. I think there was a chemotherapy agent (taxol) that was actually extracted from plants a decade or so ago, but that is becoming less and less common.

Note the definitions have nothing to do with "natural" versus synthetic, or purified from plants versus invented, as there are plenty of examples of prescription drugs obtained from living sources and plenty of examples of dietary supplements that are synthesized in factories (e.g., most vitamins). A couple of excellent examples that show that the distinction has nothing to do with the biological nature or properties of the substances are the pairs of melatonin and pitressin, and dehydroepiandrosterone and hydrocortisone. The first pair are small protein hormones, secreted by the pineal gland and posterior pituitary gland respectively. The second pair are steroid hormones produced by the adrenal glands. All four have therapeutic uses. The first item of each pair is classified and marketed as a dietary supplement while the second of each pair is a drug.

Obviously many manufacturers market their dietary supplements with hype that skates as close to the edge of the law as possible, implying that their product will fix whatever ails you while including a little message that "this product is not intended for the treatment of any disease". alteripse 00:48, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the EU, moves are afoot to bring dietary supplements into a more controlled regime (with some controversy): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2491551.stm Notinasnaid 09:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

see also Codex Alimentarius. It's not just Europe. Due to international treaties, may effect USA as well. GangofOne 11:55, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

January 16

Mutation rate of Y chromosome?

Hi wikiguys. I thought this was going to be a question-posting page but it's headed "comment". It's a question!

I've read both the "Y chromosome" article and the "genetic genealogy" article, and they didn't answer the question I was pondering about. I know we males get our Y from our dads and pass it to our sons (with a little bit of crossing-over at the tip during meiosis?), and I gather there are some variations in the Y but it mutates slowly enough so that, eg, one should be able to identify all of Tom Jefferson's male descendants (or perhaps they could be descendants of his brothers or cousins?). But *how* slowly does it mutate (on average of course)? How big a group of us would there most likely be with exactly the same set of base-pairs on the Y as I have - back to the great-to-the-nth-grandfather and out to the nth cousins, where n is what (or in what range)?

I'd quite like a personal answer to this, but the main reason I'm asking is so a bit more detail could be put into the exising entries. I find them interesting but provokingly vague at the moment.

--131.181.251.66 02:00, 16 January 2006 (UTC) John Pyke Brisbane Australia[reply]

This is an area of much research and some controversy. Many of the commercial genetic genealogy sites such as this one [9] assume a typical mutation rate estimate for each marker gene Y chromosome of about 1 in 500 generations (or 0.2%. On the other hand, cutting edge research on microsatellite mutation rates is producing different answers. See [10] for a more complicated and current discussion of the variation rates. These authors describe nearly a 10-fold difference in the rates produced by different estimates, suggesting that the results from some of the commercial public market labs are using some estimates that may need to be revised. alteripse 02:29, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

some random thoughts. When genealogists discuss Y-chromosomal DNA testing, they are in general not talking about simple point mutations (though, outside the genealogical time frame, they do discuss SNPs), but short-tandem repeat polymorphisms. The rate at which these occur is hotly debated [11] but is on the order of 0.002-0.004 or 0.2%-0.4%. - once per 125 or 250 generations. Another estimate given here is 6.9×10^-4 per 25 years. You might also find this comparison with chimpanzees interesting. As you're probably aware, the Jefferson family's Y chromosome has been studied, and some of Thomas Jefferson's more putative male descendants share it<g>. - Nunh-huh 02:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks guys - all I wanted to know and possibly more. [Alteripse, do you spend all your time answering queries on this page?] I was really interested in an answer at an order-of-magnitude level, so regardless of doubts about whether the answer is 100 or 500 generations, it's clearly more than 10 or 20 (so if every male sharing the same Y had the same surname, there'd be less surnames than there are, cos surnames only go back 15-20 generations I guess). And Nunh-huh, yes, the query was inspired by watching a doco on Jefferson and Sally Hemings. I gather that some of Hemings's descendants who thought they were Jeffersons had their suspicion confirmed (as much as it can be - they could be descended from TJ's 3rd cousin if he was lurking around Montecello), while others found out they were clearly not descended from him?

--131.181.251.66 05:17, 18 January 2006 (UTC) JP[reply]

Cell biology

What's the difference between synaptic and neurocrine cells?

And Grey's Anatomy says that cells tend to have a negative charge, and that's why there is a bit of shace between them. Ahy do they have a negative charge?

Many proteins at the surface of cells are glycosylated and have negatively charged sugars such as sialic acid (do not let the chemical diagram fool you, the carboxyl group ionizes to create a negative charge on the sugar). In general, there is some space between cells unless there are specific cell adhesion molecules that hold them tightly together.

Wikipedia does not have an entry for neurocrine. Neurocrine cells can be thought of as a subset of neuroendocrine cells. In the endocrine system the focus is usually on hormones that are distributed to target cells by the blood. However, there are paracrine substances that can act on local target cells without going through the blood stream. Similarly, there are neuron-like cells that release signaling molecules such as neuropeptides or neurotransmitters so as to act on nearby cells in a paracrine fashion. This differs from synaptic signals in that synaptic signals are generally constrained to an anatomically small region of contact (synaptic space of "cleft") between the neuron that releases the signalling molecule and the target cell that responds to the signaling molecule. However, a clear distinction between "synaptic" and "neurocrine" cells can be hard to make. A single cell can release multiple kinds of signalling molecules, some of which are restricted to synapses and some of which are not. The term "neurocrine cell" is probably used mostly by endocrinologists who deal with neuron-like cells that are located in target tissues like those of the gastrointestinal tract and that do not release their signalling molecules at synapses. --JWSchmidt 14:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing, some cells in the hypothalamus actually synaptically release neurohormones directly into the bloodstream via the anterior pituitary. Which means that they can function as both enocrine cells and neurons. You also asked about cells having a negative charge. The inside of neurons is negatively charged relative to the outside, this is what is called a membrane potential and is used to generate electrical signals to communicate with other neurons. Nrets 15:58, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

thank you

I just wanted to give you a big thank you; this is the coolest thing I've ever seen, -signed rude cell biology guy.

Nothing says "thank you" better than cold hard cash. =P —Keenan Pepper 03:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, you can give back by editing and donating your time, too. Thank you in return for using Wikipedia! --AySz88^-^ 05:27, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Camera lens aperture

Would a digital SLR camera, with a bigger diameter lens than, say, my little cannon elph digital camera be able to take better indoor pictures without a flash? In other words, if I try and take pictures inside without a flash (even in a well lit room) they are either blurry (too long an exposure) or very grainy (larger "ISO"). My question is, would a bigger lens be able to gather more light in a briefer amount of time, and therefore allow me to be able to decrease the length of the exposure without having to resort to higher ISO's, or is the aperture set somewhere else and this has nothing to do with the diameter of the lens? Burleigh 04:02, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not the absolute diameter that matters, but the focal ratio or f-number. This expresses the lens diameter as a fraction of its focal length. If you have an f/2 lens, say, that means the diameter is 1/2 the focal length, and it will gather twice as much light as an f/2.8 lens, 4 times as much as an f/4 lens -- remember that the area varies as the square as the diameter. (In brighter light you don't need the full diameter of the lens, so the lens may be "stopped down" to f/8 or or f/16 or whatever in order to improve the depth of field. When I say an f/2 lens I am referring to the full diameter of the lens, which corresponds to the lowest f-number you can set the aperture to.)

I am assuming that the "ISO" number you refer to is the equivalent to film speed and that for purposes of comparing lenses we are treating it as equal in the two cameras. Being a film-photography snob myself, I have no experience with comparing digital cameras.

--Anonymous, 05:50 UTC, January 16, 2006.

Anonymous is correct, but there's another issue; the size of the image sensor. Digital SLR's have bigger image sensors than your compact, and consequently most can be used at much higher ISO settings than a digital compact can without picture noise becoming a problem. One further issue to keep in mind is the presence of optical image stabilisers; a few compacts have them (though probably not your Elph), the Minolta digital SLR's have them built in, and you can buy (expensive but better) stabilised lenses for Canon and Nikon digital SLR's. If you're prepared to lug an SLR around, you will almost certainly get technically better pictures. --Robert Merkel 09:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Those stabilisers counteract camera movement such as a shaking hand, not movement of the subject, such as people getting blurred when photographing indoors. A lower f number (greater aperture) will indeed make better use of the size of the lens, but it also makes the depth of field smaller, meaning that a smaller distance range will be in focus. Anything before and behind that will get more blurred as you increase the aperture to let in more light. So that's another trade-off.

Another aspect is how well the camera is built. This is something Zeiss is famed for. Their cameras are hand-built. I don't know why this is, but somehow this is said to be part of the cause for the quality of the cameras (or, rather, the lenses). Apparently, with a Zeiss, you don't need a flash indoors, which is a great improvement in two ways. The photos are much better (flash gives very nasty unnatural light unless you use professional flash, which is also cumbersome to use) and you don't attract attention,meaning you can take photos without people being aware of it, which results in more natural appearances. Also, the cameras themselves are very inconspicuous. They look very cheap (but rest assured, they aren't). Which has the advantage that they're less prone to theft. They've got a few digital models out, too, now. DirkvdM 10:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! So one more question, how is the ISO implemented in the digital cameras? Does it simply take in a dim image and then artificially amplify the brightness and contrast, which is why the images look noisy, or is there more to this? Burleigh 15:50, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, digital cameras have a base ISO rating for their imaging chip. When the ISO is increased above this, the camera amplifies the signal from the chip to simulate a higher ISO. The amplification not only increases the signal strength, but also increases any noise received from the sensor. See DPReview glossary entry on ISO for a more detailed description. --GraemeL ^(talk) 16:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Penicillin Allergy and Gorgonzola / Blue Cheese

Can an individual who is allergic to Penicillin have an allergic reaction if they eat Gorgonzola or Blue Cheese? Thanks.

I'm not sure. As far as my knowledge entails, the two moulds are different, therefore cause allergic reactions in different people. But, just to be sure, check with an allergist; they have a better understanding of this matter. --JB Adder | Talk 05:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It would be a bad thing if those cheeses contained antibiotics, because that would help the rise of resistant bacteria. DirkvdM 10:39, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A good point. Also, if they did contain viable amounts of antibiotic, it seems likely that at some time the discovery that blue cheese cured some serious illnesses would have been made. In localities where it was made, many people would have consumed it every day. Notinasnaid 11:11, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the point of the question is that (since penicillin was discovered because it was produced by a mold) whether the blue mold that is included in the cheeses might contain enough natural penicillin to activate an allergy. The answer is no. I hate to say that there has never been a reported case (always a hazardous claim, even though the case may not have accurately proven cause and effect) but I am certain that if cross-reaction to mold were a clearly demonstrated phenomenon, it would be included in the avoidance instructions allergists give when someone is allergic to penicillin. Penicillin allergy is relatively common and certain other rare cross-reactions are well known to most doctors. alteripse 13:21, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am allergic to penicillin and have eaten lots of blue cheese with no noticable effect. -- Mwalcoff 03:36, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

tank and self propeller howitzer

what a different betwen tank and self proppeler howitzer?

Primarily, the angle they shoot at. A tank shoots more-or-less directly at the target, whereas a howitzer is an artillery piece and shoots up, using indirect fire so that the shell falls down onto the target from above. Because of the difference in the way they attack, tanks are generally more heavilly armoured and have additional weaponry (i.e. a machine gun), since they are more likely to engage in direct combat, where howitzers have longer gun barrels, to assist with shooting the long distances. Refer to our tank and howitzer articles for all your nation-invading needs. ByeByeBaby 05:50, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The two are more similiar in appearance than in any other factors. The basic design parameters of tanks and self propelled howitzers are entirely different. The howitzer really only has as much armor as is necessary to protect from stray counterbattery shrapnel -- as tanklike as the M109A6 looks, it's actually got armor that you could puncture with a 30mm cannon. The M110 doesn't even have a turret or any protection for its gunners, it's essentially a gun on a chassis. They're not meant to engage the enemy at all, only to shoot and move. Their very battlefield function is far different, and to say that it boils down to the angle of fire is very misleading. Night Gyr 07:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PysX (PPU) Connectivity

I've been reading up on the new PPUs that are scheduled to come out soon. I can't find information that says how the PPU will connect to a computer.

I found a picture of a PPU (card?) and it was mentioned that it would have support for the PCI-E slot (probably among others).

Is this (card?) supposed to be used in place of a regular video card, or are the video card and PPU card supposed to both be connected at once? If they're both supposed to be in at once, would I be able to use both my current PCI-E video card and the PPU together on my current SLI motherboard? Flea110 05:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article said it's initially coming as a PCI card, with PCI-E to follow shortly. It's designed to be an adjunct to a video card, not a replacement. If this product is successful, however, it will be tempting for the video card manufacturers to release integrated units and this separate card will go the way of 3D-only video cards like the early Voodoo chips. --Robert Merkel 19:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PMR 446 two way radio use

Hi,

I have a set of UK PMR446 two way radios. I will be travelling to the USA soon and I was hoping to use the radios as a baby monitoring system while in the Hotel.

I understand that the use of radios with the 446 mhz frequency are illegal in the US but I was wondering if by only using them as a baby monitor, would I be in trouble.

Hopefully you can help me.

Many thanks,

Emmet Pullan

I don't know the background to this, but one reason particular radio equipment is illegal is because it can or does interfere with other radios. (Not always, but it is a possibility). So, whether you use it as a baby monitor or not, maybe it would interfere with some other radio system in use in the hotel, by the police, or someone else. Given that, whatever the ethics, it might be more likely that you are caught than you imagine. Notinasnaid 11:38, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

444-450MHz is used by FM (radio) repeaters. --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

astronomy

the letters au in astronomy mean what?

Try searching for "au" in the search box to the left and see what turns up. --Robert Merkel 12:07, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Astronomical units, a unit of distance based on the mean radius of Earth's orbit around the Sun. ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 19:53, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised no one gave this a "do your own homework"

How easy is it for an adult to learn to ride a bicycle?

Not really sure if this is a science question, but anyway. Assuming that they never learnt as a child, how easy would it be for an adult in their 30s to learn to ride a bicycle? Are they likely to be more co-ordinated than a small child, and therefore to learn more easily, or are they likely to learn more slowly (in the same way that older people have more trouble learning to drive)? And a related question - can one buy stabilisers for an adult-sized bike (assuming that you're not too self-conscious to be seen using them)? --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 12:20, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would think adults would learn more slowly than a child who was old enough to learn. Training wheels, however, are really only useful for small children who are too young to learn to ride without them. They would only delay an adult from learning how to balance properly, as well as making for a rather humiliating experience. StuRat 12:29, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For adults, there are pros and cons. Pros: Better fine motor control and coordination; potentially longer attention span for the task. Cons: Higher center of gravity; more difficult to learn new physical tasks in general; slower healing if you fall off. There's no reason why an otherwise healthy thirty-year-old can't learn to ride a bicycle, but achieving comfort and proficiency will probably take longer.

It may also depend on your patience/motivation and whether you've done other things that develop balance like skiing, rollerblading, or horse riding (though I can report that you have some key body skills to unlearn in switching between riding and cycling, or you tend to fall off). Also: I think children require someone to help them learn (e.g. to hold the bike upright during practice). So I think it would be a difficult thing to learn in a solitary situation. One last thing if you are completely new: falling onto roads and pavements hurts, but it's very hard to ride on really soft ground. Try and find something between (e.g. a firm lawn, not wet but not baked solid). Notinasnaid 13:43, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Geez, I still have terrifying recalls of learning when I was a kid! I googled around and found that there are community programs for adults. You cannot do this alone! --Zeizmic 14:12, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why would training wheels "delay an adult from learning how to balance properly"? Their entire purpose is to help people learn balance. Black Carrot 15:55, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, the purpose of training wheels is to allow children too young to balance on a bicycle to ride one without falling over. You could leave training wheels on your whole life and would never begin to learn how to balance a bicycle without them until after they were removed. 15:56, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

MacBike tourist rental bikes in Amsterdam are painted a conspicuous yellow. Amsterdammers have learned to give these a wiiiiide berth. :) I don't know where you're from, but in some cities, where bikes are not common, cycling can be very life-threatening for an experienced biker. Let alone for a novice. Best go to some suburb. Or find a smooth and solid (non-bitumen) forest lane. DirkvdM 19:55, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would assume it would be easier because adults are stronger and would be more likely able to generate the force needed to propel the bicycle to a stable speed. But that could vary for someone very out of shape. Now adults are generally more easily embarrassed and therefore less likely to accept help and maybe less persistent in trying again, so maybe it would take longer in the end. Kids tend not to be swayed by failure and keep trying over and over until they are successful, especially for something exciting like riding a bike. - Taxman ^Talk 23:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of misconceptions in the above: (1) A higher center of gravity makes it easier to balance a bicycle, not harder (because falling takes longer, so you have more time to react and get back in balance: the same principle makes it easier to balance a broom on your hand than a pencil). (2) There's no difficulty in generating "the force needed to propel the bicycle to a stable speed". Bikes are quite stable at walking pace. Gdr 19:58, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I just learned to ride a bike at the grand old age of 17, and it's taken me hardly any time at all. If you want, get a friend or someone you trust to push you along until you get the general gist of it and know how to balance. Get advice from them too. And then... just get on and start pedalling, and it's all downhill from there. In a good way. Incidentally, I think ice-skating helps. --Sum0 23:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How to change static IP address?

Is it possible? Whenever I connect to my aDSL provider, I get a new IP, yet I also have some static IP, any way to change this also? Thank you 83.5.252.245 17:43, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What are you trying to accomplish? —Keenan Pepper 18:12, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My guess would be vandalism. I love when they ask politly for advice on vandalizing the website they're asking on, it's so cute — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.167.86.250 (talk • contribs)

I think he needs this excellent hacker tool! Tzarius 23:35, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand. So do you have static IP and want dynamic IP or do you have synamic IP and want a static one? – b_jonas 22:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

cpu

which is the worst quality out of the following CPU's: Intel dual core CPU, intel prescott CPU, AMD athlon CPU, AMS semprom CPU or 64bit CPU. please explain in detail if possible

Athlon is a long line of processors spanning many years. "64bit" is not even a specific brand of processor. There is no way to compare these things because they refer to unrelated aspects of a processor. —Keenan Pepper 18:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not post multiple questions about the same subject. This list makes no sense, it's like comparing apples, oranges, Granny Smiths, and juicy things. —Keenan Pepper 18:11, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously.

As a 14-year-old white male, living in England, how likely am I to die of bird flu? Kid Apathy 18:20, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment, the odds are pretty much nonexistent. But people are mostly worried that the bird flu will mutate into something more pernicious in humans, and since that is currently primarily a hypothetical question exactly what the risk is to anyone is somewhat unknown and up in the air. --Fastfission 18:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to die. Kid Apathy 18:28, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to read bird flu. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:29, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I suppose "Kid Apathy" is a misnomer, then? Anyway, your odds of dying in a much more mundane manner are still much higher than the perhaps-pandemic-of-the-month in most cases. --Fastfission 18:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If this current form of avian flu reaches England, there are some questions that will become relevant: do you drink bird blood or play with bird excrement? --JWSchmidt 18:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...no... Kid Apathy 18:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How frightened are you of "last year's" nemesis: mad cow disease? Based on statistics to date, you are a 10,000 times more likely to die of a car accident, at least a hundred times more likely to die of a terrorist attack, and 10 times more likely to die of mad cow disease than bird flu. It is amazing, isn't it, how journalistic coverage warps our risk estimations (not just yours, mine too)? alteripse 18:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I posted this somewhere else- how true is it?

Scientists think that maybe lots of people have had bird flu, but haven't shown major symptoms.

No-one apparently realises that if that were the case, bird flu is not nearly as strong as they're making out to be.

Anyway, the only cases covered by the media would be ones where the ill people died. And they probably had something wrong with them anyway, like immunological disorders or something. That may sound extremely cruel, but I have no idea how else to phrase it :P

Just now on the news, they were talking about it but only how it'd affect chicken farms. So it can't be that bad.

Vitriol 18:35, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's a chance, but if I were you I'd concentrate on looking both ways when you cross the road rather than watching chickens and hoping they don't sneeze (Yes, I know infected chickens don't sneeze...) smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 18:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have another question. Would you like to hear it? Vitriol 18:39, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There will be another pandemic, just a matter of time. Whether it will come from bird flu I don't know. Possibly the worst pandemic ever was spanish flu. That killed 50 to 100 million people world wide. That's about 5% of the then world population. But that was helped by the appalling situation after WWI and medicine has improved significantly since. So if you experience a pandemic in your lifetime, there'll probably be at least a 99% chance you'll survive. And if you're young and fit that will also greatly increase your chances. In the Netherlands about 1000 people per year die of car accidents. On a population of about 15 moillion that means a chance of death by car of about 0.5%. But the age thing is reversed here. It's especially young people who die of car accidents. The major death causes of people under 40 were at the end of the 19th century child mortality, death of the mother at birth, war and epidemics (wasn't there a fifth cause?. The first two are eliminated and the third largely (for Europeans at least). Epidemics are still a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads, but they're not a clear and present danger (yet). Cars are. They're the big killers of our time.

Alteripse, are you suggesting that terrorist attacks are 1/100 as dangerous as cars? You've got to be joking. Cars have killed 25 million people in the last 50 years or so. Surely, terrorism hasn't killed 250,000 people in the same timespan. And dont' give me that crap about terrorism being on the rise. Though maybe in England and Spain the death toll has been relatively higher (and I am referring to the IRA and ETA). DirkvdM 20:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No argument about cars vs everything else. I made up the numbers, but I think that more people have been killed in the UK by terrorists in the last couple of decades than by mad cow disease and bird flu put together. My point was simply that our brains don't do accurate weighing of risks that vary by more than an order of magnitude in likelihood or that hold disparate cultural dreadfulness values.alteripse 20:32, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

With a quote from South Park:

Randy: Listen to me Stanley. I have SARS. There's only a 98% percent chance that I will live.
Stan: No Dad, No!
Randy: Listen Stan! Sars is destroying our people. The Native americans put it in the blankets they gave us. Soon there will be only 98% of us left.

--helohe (talk) 20:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

alteripse- You made up those numbers? That's a pretty horrible thing to do on the reference desk, especially if you claim it's "based on statistics to date". 69.154.179.63 00:58, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The specific odds for the other risks were not the requested piece of information; I believe the relative magnitudes to be reasonably close within an order of magnitude (other than my underestimation of the car deaths); and adjusting them doesn't change the main point of my answer, as explained above. Sorry if I disillusioned you; I believe in admitting it if someone correctly points out I erred. alteripse 02:41, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The current risk is important, but so is the potential risk. If we only took preventative actions against things which have already killed millions of people, we would suffer from massive deaths every year from disease. Some apparent threats, like Mad Cow Disease, never materialized, probably due to the corrective actions we took, like stopping the practice of killing sick cows, grinding them up, and feeding them to healthy cows (in their grain). Other diseases which were not widespread at the time of the first warnings, like AIDS in the early 1980's, have grown to the point where they do kill millions every year. So, such warnings are not silly, but should be taken seriously. StuRat 15:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The thing about bird flu is not catching it, but the sheer horror of trying to eat Hainanese chicken rice with frozen chicken imported from Brazil....which tastes horrible. When Malaysia caught it in 2004, Singapore cut off all imports for a while, since I was used to fresh chicken (ie. only hours away) from the kampung. Bird flu sucks because it affects food, not merely your health. Elle _{vécut heureuse} ^{à jamais} (Be eudaimonic!) 18:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Book about Cryptography

Whats the Book about Cryptography? I once heard "Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier" is a good one. But is there any book that could be called The Book? --helohe (talk) 20:13, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think these four books are the standard works:

Bruce Schneier, Applied Cryptography, 2nd edition, Wiley, 1996, ISBN 0471117099.
A. J. Menezes, P. C. van Oorschot, and S. A. Vanstone, Handbook of Applied Cryptography ISBN 0849385237.
Stinson, Douglas R., * Cryptography: Theory and Practice, CRC Press, 1995.
Stallings, William, Cryptography and Network Security (3rd Ed.), Prentice Hall, 2003.

Cheers, —Ruud 20:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I will buy one of them. -- helohe (talk) 21:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you are looking for a book that is more about history and fun stories, you can look at Simon Singh's The Code Book. It is next to useless for learning how modern cryptography works, but it is great for understanding where modern cryptography came from. --Kainaw ^(talk) 21:47, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you need any further guidance, I suggest you talk to User:Matt Crypto our resident cryptography ~~nut~~ expert ;) . - Mgm|^(talk) 08:41, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Codebreakers : The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet by David Kahn -- GangofOne 02:48, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How do I clean a duvet? (Not the cover, the actual duvet).

~~They wouldn't take them in a dry cleaners, would they? --bodnotbod 20:22, 16 January 2006 (UTC)~~ Never mind. It's solved. --bodnotbod 21:50, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia, I am your father

Does that make any sense?

I think we need a Philosophy reference desk. —Ruud 21:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Luke, I am your father --JWSchmidt 21:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo Wales --Sum0 23:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Energy

Is ocean wave energy classified as potential or kinetic energy and why?

Read the top of the article: Do your own homework. If you really need help, read the articles on kinetic energy and potential energy. --Kainaw ^(talk) 21:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

January 17

Fleems

Is there really such thing as a 'fleem' or a 'microfleem'? Black Carrot 01:01, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not in modern English, but 'to fleme' means to chase away. --James S. 03:50, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a nonsense term used in IQ tests like so: "If all fleems are dweebs, are all dweebs also fleems ?" StuRat 15:29, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I got them from Dilbert comics. I'm wondering whether they're real, or just made up for the purpose of the joke. Black Carrot 20:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

@ microfleem reminds me to a microfilm. – b_jonas 22:06, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Also Floops--152.163.101.12 02:56, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could be a hoax, but http://www.earlytech.com/common/show_item.phtml?Id=1295001497 includes a photo of an 18th century blood letting instrument identified as a fleem. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:59, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talismin

Is there a name/classification for animals that have tails? Specifically vertebrate animals where the spine continues into a tail. I am uncertain whether this class would be restricted to mammals. Thank you for your assistance!

Caudate mammals means tailed mammals. Understand this is merely an adjective, not a taxonomic classification. alteripse 02:44, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if this fits in with official terminology, but all mammals have tails. Ours are just too short to come out (well, mine is anyway :) ). See tailbone. DirkvdM 07:57, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hosting a web server

I'm interested in hosting a web server from my (Linux) computer. I have Apache, but I don't have a domain name. Do I need a "static IP address" for that? When I asked 5-6 years ago, people said that starting a web server was really easy, but Verizon says that a static IP would be another $50 a month. What's the cheapest way to run a webserver from my computer? Is it true that some ISPs won't let you run web servers even if you've paid for the bandwidth? -- Creidieki 02:01, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can also use some dynamic DNS service like no-ip.com (which a friend of mine uses). Yes, some ISPs do filter port 80; if that's the case, you can still run the webserver in an alternate port, but people would then need to remember that port (or you could use a redirector service). You need a real IP address; if you are behind some sort of NAT, it's harder or even impossible. --cesarb 03:28, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, no-ip.com is nice. I use it for ssh and stuff. —Keenan Pepper 03:46, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What is the most chemically reactive metal?

—The preceding unsigned header was added by 24.36.108.53 (talk • contribs) .

Should be lithium I guess, though it's been ages since I did any chemistry. deeptrivia (talk) 03:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually it's caesium or the unstable francium. The heavier alkali metals ionize more readily. —Keenan Pepper 03:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you asking for the greatest number of different compounds formed, reaction rate in air/water/other, number of different stable oxidation states, catalytic properties, or something else? --James S. 03:45, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sodium is also quite reactive: [12] StuRat 15:18, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bulls are color blind, then why are they furious about red?

i've heard that bulls are color blind, and still they chase red things. why? why ? why?

Well, the article on bull fighting agrees with you about the color blindness: The red colour of the cape is a matter of tradition, as bulls are actually colour blind. The article may mention this as I only skimmed through it and happened to find that bit. Dismas|^(talk) 04:51, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The red cape used in bullfighting is merely a tradition for the benefit of human audiences (the majority of whom can distinguish between colours) - the bull is enraged by the fact that people have been chasing it round the ring, sticking things in it, and its attention is drawn to the movement of the large piece of cloth being waved in front of its eyes; it has no way of knowing that it's red. - IMSoP 04:52, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Right: Bulls don't chase red things. Not outside of old Disney cartoons anyway. --BluePlatypus 09:49, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They wouldn't even chase a red platypus, even if it pretends to be blue. DirkvdM 20:01, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But that probably has more to do with the lethal characteristics of the platypus in general. Many dogs have died by making the mistake of chasing a platypus. --BluePlatypus 20:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

AC or DC current? which is more dangerous and why?

which is more dangerous Alternate current or the direct one? i knew that but forgot?

It really depends on how high that current is, but if it's anything above a few milli Amps, it's pretty much deadly anyway. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:44, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience, whoever wants you to be careful around a particular type of electricity says that that type is the most dangerous. AC is capable of killing you quickly by interfering with your heart action. DC is capable of paralyzing your muscles so you can't get away from the current and it has more time to injure you. Higher voltages are dangerous because the electricity can overcome electrical resistance and give you a shock. Lower voltages are dangerous (outside of low-power applications) because a larger current is required to achieve the same power and therefore there is a greater risk of overheating and fire in case of damaged wiring or a bad connection. Take your pick. --Anonymous, 8:43 UTC, January 17, 2006.

Reputedly, Thomas Edison, who backed direct current hated George Westinghouse, who liked alternating current, so he had some of the scientists in his company kill animals with alternating current to prove how dangerous it was. However, this backfired when New York state was so amazed by this idea, they used alternating current to power electric chairs! smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 16:42, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a bit twisted; Edison liked the idea of AC being used for executing condemned prisoners, for the same reason as the animal demonstrations. He not only suggested that AC be used for this purpose (subtext: and only for this purpose), he even suggested a new term for it: "westinghousing". --Anon, 00:55 UTC, January 18.

In theory, DC is supposed to be the more dangerous. However, the situations where people are most often injured by an electric shock are AC: e.g. christmas lights, or a plug in the bathroom, or stealing metal from high-voltage wires or transformators. This has to do with that AC can be more easily transformed and so it's more suitable for use in housholds, while DC is used in portable devices with a much lower voltage. (However, do take care with car batteries. Even though their voltage is only around 12V, their resistance is very low so you can get injured easily if you mess with one.) – b_jonas 22:00, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Brown's Note

What is Brown's note? are the myths about it really true? what are its effects on human body when exposed to it? --Muhammad Hamza 04:50, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Brown note. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:04, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Submarine nucular reactor weight

I have searched all or most of the articles on nuclear submarines and thier reactors and have not been able to find the weight of the reactor. Maybe I over looked it but I basically want to know what is the wirght of a submarine nuclear reactor?--68.120.71.145 05:28, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This would be hard to find because I think it would be classified, as are most data regarding nuclear submarines.

plants

can plants grow in sand?

Yes, but it's difficult without a supplementary source of nutrients; if plants do gain a foothold the topsoil will gradually be transformed into something more hospitable. Many grasses grow on coastal sand dunes. See the sand dune article. --Robert Merkel 06:35, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can also find Rosa Rugosa, Artemisia (not sure of the species, there are many), and Lathyrus odoratus (sweet peas, not the edible kind though) growing in sand dunes in the N.E. U.S. I've seen evergreen shrubs growing in dunes as well but I don't know enough to tell you what genus. I can tell you that they are painful to fall into. Jasongetsdown 22:29, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where can I get ethane clathrate?

I want to get a small amount of methane clathrate to play around with. Where can I get it and how much does it cost? —Keenan Pepper 06:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From the description here, it looks like the stuff's not commercially viable yet - though it may soon be. A quick search on a few chemical supply stores doesnt give any hits, which does back up the statement. GeeJo _{(t) (c)} •19:45, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Free Subscription of Scientific Journals/Magazines

Dear Sir, I want to know about the free subscription for scientific journnals/magazines according that I would like to subscribg other journnals for our Institute.

Thanking you

Bankar

As far as I know a subscription to a scientific journal or magazine is quite expensive. Why did you think you could subscribe for free? - Mgm|^(talk) 08:47, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So long as you not make a habit of this, note that some major bookstore chains have both:
- A coffee shop where you can have soup and sandwiches in the middle of your shopping,
- All sorts of magazines including Scientific Journals like Scientific American.
So, go to one of those places, browse, pick up a handful of publications, go to the coffee shop and read some of your selection, while eating what they have to offer (more expensive than a restaurant, but not by much), then change your mind about what you are going to buy and take with you.

User:AlMac|^(talk) 09:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have a suspicion he does not have a nearby Barnes & Noble. I am guessing that he is asking about reduced rate or free subscriptions for developing world institutions who cannot afford the western prices for scientific and technical journals. The "institutional price" for one of these can exceed a thousand dollars a year. He will need to contact the publishers directly for the journals he is interested in; the contact information is usually available at the publishers' websites. An alternative is that many American libraries are willing to ship duplicate journals to third world libraries, but you don't always get the latest issue when published. A third suggestion is contacting some of the university library associations for suggestions. This one has a mailing list, which might be good place to enquire. Do we have any university librarians who read this and can provide suggestions? alteripse 12:41, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are some free publications, like NASA Tech Briefs, which are free to promote NASA funding by gaining publicity. Either we lack an article on that magazine, or I just failed to find it. Here is the subscription site: [13]. StuRat 14:46, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I added a stub for NASA Tech Briefs, please expand. StuRat 21:51, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you are a student, or represent a placea of education, you might be able to get some scientific magazines free or very cheap. Try New Scientist - it used to do that back when I was in school (though they were chiselling each edition on stone tablets then). DJ Clayworth 16:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen something here http://www.freetrademagazinesource.com/8/categories.aspx but havent reviewed it. helohe (talk) 19:13, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Dutch magazine Intermediair is free for students during the last year of their study and the year after they graduate. But it's no longer as scientific as it used to be and anyway it's in Dutch. Something similar might exist in Anglophone countries, though. But then you'd have to get them to your country (which I guess is India). Ok, not such a great idea after all. Sorry. DirkvdM 20:13, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you are interested in recent publications that you can read online you could also check out Arxiv (its free). helohe (talk) 21:21, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise, http://plos.org/ Public Library of Science free web peer reviewed journals GangofOne 23:09, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most major science journals are beginning to make scientific articles older than 6 months available for free through their websites. While not all, journals do this, it is becoming a major trend. Nrets 04:00, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

multiple disorders with autism

where can i find information about multiple disorders with autism? eg. a person might be blind and autistic. In that case how to go about him/her? is there any chance of improvement? any general information? any therapy available?

Which part: the blindness or the autism? If it's autism, there is an interesting quote in autism: many autistic children and adults who are able to communicate (at least in writing) are opposed to attempts to cure their conditions, and see such conditions as part of who they are. Notinasnaid 09:19, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

i am interested in specificly blindness + autismadityaa1

Again: which part do you want to "improve"? Blindness or autism? And what would you consider an improvement? Notinasnaid 11:26, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The autism. but the method or therapy should be modified keeping the blindness in mind. i was not able to find such specific method.in a specific case, the patient is not able to communicate per se. although sporadic usage of sign language(tought previously )is noted. adityaa1 11:23 17 Jan 06 (IST)

Thank you for clarifying the framework of the question. Notinasnaid 18:03, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

what is xml?

(No question)

What is xml? Good question I think. enochlau (talk) 10:41, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bandwidth monitor software

At present, I am using an Internet connection which is not unlimited. I pay by the number of MegaBytes used. Is there any free software available in the web that will tell how many MegaBytes I have used?

You would be slowing down your connection with monitoring. When we had that, the company had a link that would show the tally. I hated it. Thank goodness, competition forced them to be unlimited. --Zeizmic 12:50, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would think you could monitor your end (number of bits sent and received) without slowing down the connection. Think of it as a pipe delivering water and another pipe sending water. If you put something in the pipes themselves to measure the water, it would indeed slow down the water in the pipe. If you measured the amount after it leaves the pipe or before it enters the pipe, that shouldn't slow down how fast it moves inside the pipe, however. StuRat 14:58, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

While it's not free, DU Meter it does have a 30-day trial period, and I used it, bought it, and have always been more than happy with it. It monitors your instant connection speed, as well as totals (per day/week/month/year), and you can tell it to alert you when you've reached a certain number of MB per week, for instance. — QuantumEleven | (talk) 15:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

With my ISP, I can log in on their website and see how much I've used, so you might want to check if your ISP does something similar. --Sum0 23:12, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How to remove fine scratches from plastic eye glasses?

Is there an easy inexpensive effective way to remove fine scratches from my plastic prescription eye glasses?

I would think filling in the scratches with a clear acrylic resin would be the way to go. I imagine an eyeglass store would carry such a product. StuRat 14:53, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Did you happen to clean them with paper tissues? Don't in the future. Those are most likely the cause of the scratches. - 131.211.210.11 09:47, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chimps? Yes/no?

Are Bonobos and Chimps actually the same species? They do look very much alike--205.188.116.74 16:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There was actually something about this in The Times yesterday; they belong to the Chimpanzee family, but they aren't what we commonly refer to as chimps. smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 16:36, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are two species in the chimpanzee genus, the Common Chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes, and the Bonobo or Pygmy Chimpanzee, Pan paniscus. Wikipedia's articles do a good job of explaining the difference. (Note: there is no "chimpanzee family": chimps are in the same family as humans, Hominidae.) Gdr 19:44, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the previous commenter would have been more correct to say "Bonobos are in the chimpanzee genus". StuRat 21:05, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They are different species. Apparently they are very similar except for their social lives, which are quite different. The oversimplified version I think is that bonobo's are more peacefully cooperative than chimps. See [14] for some examples. alteripse 01:00, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think social differences are sufficient to mark a species boundary, but rather physiological differences are required. StuRat 09:49, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct but it isnt the social differences that distinguish the two species--- they just seem far more strikingly different than the known biological differences. alteripse 00:10, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Which is more competitive:Wi-Fi/Wimax or mobile technologies like 2G and 3G?

How much does a Wi-fi service (unlimited) cost? and what speeds do they offer?

It depends on what you want to do. At first, you actually mention THREE technologies. The oddball is WiFi, also known as 802.11 and WLAN, as it isn't really for wide-area adoption, while the other two are. Wimax and cellular networks are widearea though. If you want to be connected everywhere, you would go for one of the last ones. As I don't think WiMax has been deployed on a wide scale yet, probably cellulars will be the safe bet for the timing. It could, however very well change in the coming years, and depending on your location, YMMV. Both WiMax and mobile phone networks will also probably be quite expensive, I suppose.

If what you're looking for is a fast, cheap solution, and you can live with having your connection tied to a specific location(s), WLAN is the way to go. Base stations ("wireless access point") are availabe from around €50, and have a reach of potentially around 100 m in good conditions (more if using directional antennas i.e. fixed point-to-point systems). They are also higher-bandwidth than both WiFi and cellphone networks. So, conclusion: it really depends on what you want to do. As always. :) TERdON 23:45, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comparision between India and USA

I am interested in comparing wireless service in India and USA. In India, a CDMA 2000 1X wireless Internet connection offering speeds upto 144 kbps (unlimited) is available for Rupees 1500 (or $33). (Two companies Reliance and Tata offer this). Can anyone say how much does a similar service cost in USA. If you know how much does a similar service cost in other parts of the world, please tell.

Dam Construction

Why are there service tunnels in dams? If a dam is made of solid concrete,and water level control is by catchment and conduit not part of the dam wall, what is there to service?

Solid concrete needs occasional service, such as inspecting for and repairing small cracks before they become serious problems. Also, I suspect they use reinforced concrete, not solid concrete, but that would also require occasional inspection and repair. StuRat 20:03, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hoover Dam, for one, doesn't contain rebar. It's kept in compression by its shape (like a sideways arch), so it doesn't need to be made of reinforced concrete. --Joel 20:25, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Welcome to Hoover Dam. I'll be your dam guide for the entire dam tour. Feel free to take as many dam pictures as you want, but please hold all your dam questions until the end." National Lampoon's Family Vacation StuRat 21:00, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dams are meant to last a very long time. I've gone through many service tunnels, and they are necessary. They usually lead to important bits, such as the penstocks. --Zeizmic 13:18, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

inertia

I once heard that there is a term for for counterclockwise rotation of the flow of water in the southern hemisphere, is that so? And to what effect is it called. Thank you.--65.198.174.210 18:06, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Coriolis effect is what you're looking for. --GraemeL ^(talk) 18:12, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly enough, the article on Coriolis effect states that it is "a popular misconception" that "the Coriolis effect determines the direction in which bathtubs or toilets drain". - Akamad 19:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_161.html has a pretty thorough description of that. Black Carrot 20:18, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it would if the water in the tub was very very still and it would be unplugged without disturbing the water. I've seen this done, but it wasn't an ordinary bathtub and done under laboratory-like conditions. DirkvdM 20:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

tic/ tourette syndrome help

I've read about both tics and Tourette's syndrome on Wikipedia. Can this site provide me with the information about preferred places' I can go for medical attention, if I feel I may have either of these problems? if so, please inform me. Thank you - Unsigned.

You should consult with your personal physician, who can refer you to a neurologist if he deems it appropriate. See this link for more information: Tourette Syndrome Association, Inc. Tourette Syndrome Association, Inc. 42-40 Bell Boulevard Bayside NY 11361 Phone: (718) 224-2999 E-mail: ts@tsa-usa.org

Also see TOURETTE'S SYNDROME DOCTORS--Mark Bornfeld DDS 19:40, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

theoretical basis

what is a theoretical basis?

See theory. If some piece of information or knowledge is founded upon a theory, then that theory forms the basis of the information or knowledge. --Joel 20:07, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The alternative is something which is strictly observed thru experimentation, but has no theoretical basis. For example, many chemicals have been identified as carcinogenic (causing cancer) without a specific theory as to how each causes cancer. StuRat 20:19, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Average lifespan of an eyelash

What is the average lifespan of an eyelash?

I've added this tidbit (&reference) to our eyelash article. Samw 00:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

4 months --Femto 21:05, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

January 18

How to remove "write protection" from usb flash drive?

I have a 512mb usb flash drive, and it has worked perfectly for a few weeks (since I bought it). Recently I can't use the drive because it says it's write protected. I can't put things on it, take things off it, or format it. I'm sure that it doesn't have a "write protection switch".

I've looked around on several forums, and can't find any answers that work. I've tried the manufacturers tech support, but they've not helped much.

How can I remove the write protection from my usb drive so that I can use it again? Flea110 01:33, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tried formatting it? With another OS / installation ? If you can't read the data, then either some sort of encryption system has been turned on, or the thing is simply broken. Tzarius 02:46, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have formatted it in the past and it worked fine then. Since it started saying it's write protected, I have tried to format it on computers with windows xp, 2000, and 98. I can read the data, in as much as I can see what files are on it. I don't know if this is important, but the drive doesn't require drivers to be installed, except on windows 98. Flea110 03:10, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's normal - 2000 and later (nt?) come with USB Mass Storage Device drivers by default. Many manufacturers only include the driver cd for win95/98 users, and occasionaly, the product manual. For what it's worth, floppy drives give a similiar "could not write, or write protected" error in Windows when the floppy is corrupted. Tzarius 04:35, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Saliva production among ethnic groups

Is it true that ethnically Japanese people produce less saliva than Westerners, and thus tend towards wetter foods? I saw this mentioned in a bread-related anime, but couldn't find the information at saliva or Japanese people. -- Creidieki 01:33, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder what kind of a grad student studies the amount of saliva produced by different groups of people? Poor thing... --Quasipalm 03:18, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Besides all of the other curiosities that your question suggests, what do you mean by "wetter foods"? hydnjo talk 04:31, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The most logical meaning would be foods with a higher water content. A higher fat content would also help otherwise "dry" foods go down, but I can't believe anyone likes more fat in their food than Westerners. I'd talk on this subject more, but I think I'll go grab a triple bacon cheeseburger with extra mayo, a side of chili-cheese fries, and a milk shake first. StuRat 09:38, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I can think of several useful reasons for researching a correlation between salivary volume and demographic data-- for example, it could be compared with various epidemiologic data to gain insight into salivary function or the mechanism behind a particular disease-- tooth decay, for example. However, I am unaware of any studies dealing with salivary volume and ethnicity or nationality.--Mark Bornfeld DDS 14:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm even more concerned about the existence of "bread-related anime." --Maxamegalon2000 16:27, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you need to digest certain parts of bread (not crust, but chemicals) with your saliva first. "saliva contains the enzyme amylase, also called ptyalin, that breaks some starches down". This is cultural, as Japanese eat less bread than rice. --DLL 23:40, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Number of nerve endings in the clitoris

I read somewhere that the clitoris has twice the total number of nerve endings as the penis. Is this true? It seems likely that the clitoris has twice the density of nerve endings, but it seems incredible that it has twice the total number. —Keenan Pepper 01:56, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here's someone who seems to have some insight: [15] He pretty much agrees that they have a comparable number of nerve endings, but the clitoris has more of them directly exposed, since much more of the penis is internal. Night Gyr 02:29, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Other way round: it's actually the clitoris that is largely internal. Compare Image:Male anatomy.png (and [16]) with Image:Clitoris inner anatomy.gif. —Charles P. (Mirv) 16:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Density is pretty variable in this case. :) DirkvdM 08:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Vagina Monologues has popularized the "twice as many as the penis" idea. --jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 01:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes. I remember now. But the question remains, is it true? I'm going to say they're "roughly the same" in our clitoris article. —Keenan Pepper 18:23, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Atoms

How do you split an atom? I don't understand how you could split a microscopic object. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.177.113.158 (talk • contribs) 04:46, January 18, 2006 (UTC)

I guess you don't really split it, it's more like smashing two of them together and looking very closely at what flies out of the mess. See particle accelerator. --AySz88^-^ 05:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Atoms are smaller still, they're sub-microscopic. You can't even see them with an electron microscope. But that doesnt mean they can't be split. Nuclear fission does that. Atoms come in different sizes, containing more or less of the three building blocks electrons, protons and neutrons. Fission creates two smaller atoms from a big one by shooting a neutron into the original atom, distributing the building blocks between the two new ones. Plus some material that flies off, such as more neutrons to split yet more atoms, thus creating a chain reaction. DirkvdM 09:02, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can see big atoms like gold pretty well with a scanning tunneling microscope. —Keenan Pepper 13:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the original poster is wondering how you could aim something at an atom to split it, since an atom is so tiny. The answer is that you don't. If you're trying to arrange for atoms uranium-235 to be split by neutrons, for example, then you arrange it so that a lot of neutrons will go into a mass of U-235. Some of them, by chance, will hit atoms of the U-235 in the right way; and the atoms that they happen to hit are the ones that will be split. As DirkvdM mentions, if the products of the split include more neutrons (and for U-235 that will be true), then they can split more atoms (again at random), causing a chain reaction. --Anonymous, 23:50 UTC, January 18.

How do double planets work?

A NASA spokesperson said they expect to learn a lot "about how double planets work" from the returned probe. What do we know so far (other than maybe tides)? Common Man 05:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know that they do work. In fact, it seems to me I've heard they've got nothin' to do, but roll around Heaven all day. --Trovatore 05:27, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

:-) Yeah - it's good to be a double planet! But what is it, then, that NASA is hoping to find out about them? Common Man 06:19, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look at the mission website for a detailed look at some of the things they're hoping to learn. Basically, they currently know very about Pluto and KBO's, as even the biggest telescopes can't get particularly good images of them. --Robert Merkel 07:44, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

how to know by seeng that this port is serial and that port is parallel

how to know by seeng that this port is serial and that port is paralleltext

Parallel ports are usually larger than serial ports. Our article about serial ports includes a picture of one of them, and the parallel port is at least twice as wide. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 06:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On recent PC's that still bother with these quite old interfaces, DE-9 (9-pin male) connectors are usually RS232 serial ports, and DB-25 (25-pin male) connectors are usually parallel ports. D-subminiature has a picture of the two different types of sockets. However, some really old PC's have DB-25 serial port connectors, identical to the parallel ports! In practice, they are both almost obsolete, having been replaced with the Universal Serial Bus. --Robert Merkel

Not identical. DB-25 parallel ports are female (on the computer-end). Serial ports (9 or 25-pin) are male. --BluePlatypus 14:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, the good old days in the 80's, when both ports were identical. Plug it in wrong and you blew something. Now, everything just fits one way -- pandering to the soft-brained. :) --Zeizmic 16:24, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...except for audio jacks and those round plugs you use for mice and keyboards, plus the continued use of D-subs for everything from modems to monitors. And of course, it's quite easy to plug, say, an RJ-11 phone plug in an RJ-45 Ethernet socket. Not to mention those fancy multiport flash card readers — just try figuring out how to correctly plug, say, an xD card in one of those. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:55, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Misplaced Earth Tilt question

Is it possible the earthquake that created the tsunami of December 16, 2004 has had an effect on global warming? The NASA website has published the earth tilted on its axis by as much as 2 centimeters and the sphere of the earth was also flattened causing the revolution of the earth to slow down. Would this change global temperature? I have not seen or heard of any reference of the two being linked or related. (unknown author/time)

(Moved from top of page --AySz88^-^ 08:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC))[reply]

It takes an enormous amount of energy to shift the earth by 2 cm, but that's still so tiny as to be insignificant compared to the size of the earth. Night Gyr 08:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Any change in the Earth's temp would be completely insignificant. StuRat 09:03, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A change in tilt measured in cm?? At the surface, I suppose, but still an odd way of expressing it. DirkvdM 09:10, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The earth wobbles on its axis all the time (Chandler wobble). Usually they measure the migration of the actual North Pole as it exists on the surface (makes it tougher for explorers chasing it around!). Really big earthquakes can cause the plot to shift suddenly. No effect on climate, though. --Zeizmic 13:31, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do Fish Get Thirsty?

Do salt water fish dehydrate from drinking salt water? How do fish drink? How often?

Fish do drink water, but I don't know how often. They have special cells in their gills that maintain the concentration of salts in their bodies by actively pumping out ions like sodium and chloride. —Keenan Pepper 16:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First fish where born in less salted oceans. Now they need to maintain that peculiar state. Note that fish are our ancestors : our blood and cells do the same all the time, so we need kidneys and all that stuff. --DLL 23:31, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Homer Smith wrote a book entitled From Fish to Philosopher, which addressed evolution of kidney function and the differences in function needed to exist on land versus a saltwater environment. Fish do not need to drink in the same sense we do to replace water lost in sweat and breathing, but they still need to ingest enough water to serve as a vehicle to excrete things that need to be excreted. alteripse 00:08, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vapor pressure

Question: (Vapor Pressure) Say for instance I take the classical experiment to calculate vapor pressure – i.e. a closed container filled halfway with a liquid (say Benzene) and attached to it a simple manometer to measure the vapor pressure. At a fixed temperature I will measure a certain vapor pressure. What happens if now I put a valve between the manometer and the container to “Discharge” the vapor pressure? Will it build up again? Say I discharge it again? Please explain. Martin van Rooyen

The vapor pressure will always return to the same equilibrium vapor pressure as long as there is liquid left. —Keenan Pepper 15:54, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fo'shure, we have here a homework-seeker. --Zeizmic 16:19, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grep Question

I want to search CSV files for values. I was using: grep ",text to look for," * The problem is that that will ignore values at the beginning or end of a line. I tried: grep "[^,]text to look for[,$]" *, but that obviously will not work. How to you state "Beginning of file or a comma" and "End of file or a comma" in grep's regex? --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:38, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think you can use "\|" to match either of two expressions, as in ",text to look for,\|^text to look for,\|...". —Keenan Pepper 15:50, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Found it: using (^|,) means "beginning of line or a comma". My mistake was using the square brackets. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cant't see the need for grepping commas ? Is the returned text not the same with grep "text to look for" * ? --DLL 23:27, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, not the same. Consider what happens if the field contains something like "this is not the text to look for". The simple grep will find it, and that's wrong.

Depending on the version of grep in use, you may need to use an option -E or invoke it under the name egrep in order for the (^|,) syntax to be accepted. In traditional grep, ( and | were non-special characters. Evidently it worked for Kainaw, though. --Anonymous, 23:58 UTC, January 18.

Correct, I did use egrep (while grep -E would have worked as well). As why I need to grep for commas... This is a CSV file - a comma separated text database dump. If I want an entry containing 123, I do not want 1234 or 0123. So, I have to declare the beginning and end of the entry with the commas (or the beginning/end of the line). --Kainaw ^(talk) 21:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

holographic film composition

I am curious as to what kind of thermoplastic is used in the thin film that constitutes the holographic layer in the conventional hologram -- not the polyester base film of the embossed copies. Joss

Total number of cell divisions in the history of life?

Do you have an estimation for "Total number of cell divisions in the history of life?" Thanks

Somewhere between the number of grains of sand on a beach and the number of stars in the heavens. GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 20:02, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Newton showed that to be precisely 5.34865 shitloads. History has proved him startlingly accurate. Black Carrot 20:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Taking inspiration from the Drake Equation, I have created the "Johntex equation" in attempt to estimate how many cell divisions have occured since the origin of life on Earth:

Variable	Description	Value	Source
EarthPop	Current world human population	6,450,000,000	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
HBC	Cells in an average human body	1E+14	http://ask.yahoo.com/20020625.html
HBCD	Number of cell divisions needed to make 1 x 10^14 cells	7.03687E+13	Math
HBCR	Numer of times, on average, each cell in the human body replaced during life	3	My estimate
PerBio	Percent humans comprise of the world's biomass	1%	http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/plant_food_040629.html
Years	Years since the origin of life	4E+12	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_life
Turnover	Number of years needed for world's biomass to turn-over, on average	20	My estimate
Conclusion	Total number of cell divisions=	2.72E+47	=EarthPop * HBC * HBCD * HBCR * PerBio * Years / Turnover

The total of 2.72E+47 would be just for life on Earth.

If one wanted to also consider the number of cell divisions that have occured in extraterrestrial life, one could multiply by the number of worlds that support life using a modified version of the Drake Equation. To do this, one would ommitt the variables relating to the life forms developing an intelligent culture, for example:

If R=10, fp=0.5, ne=2, fl=1, and L=100,000,000, then the modified Drake equation would give 1E+09.

Multiplying 2.72E+47 by 1E+09, we get 2.72E+56 for the total number of cell divisions of all life anywhere in the Milky Way. By comparison, the total number of stars in the Milky Way is estimated to be something more than 2E+9. By these calculations, the number of cell divisions that have occured in the galaxy would be about 1.36E+47 times more than the number of stars in the galaxy.

I think these figures are probably accurate to within about 10 orders of magnitude. Johntex\^talk 22:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can knock three orders of magnitude off your estimate straight away; 4000 million years is

4\times 10^{9}

. --Robert Merkel 22:34, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, cells in the human body are replaced (on average) way more than 3 times in your lifetime, given that skin cells go through mitosis roughly once a day, and meiosis of sperm occurs roughly every 3 days. Also, about 30% of the Earth's biomass is inert, dead cells [17]. GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 13:03, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! I am very happy to see that people are suggesting better valuables for some of the variables. If we say the average person replaces their cells every third day on average (I am assuming skin cells go through mitosis more frequently than the average cell), and assuming the average life-span is 70 years, then (70 years * 365days/year * 1/3division/day) = 8,500 complete cell replacements in a human life. That is almost a three order of magnitude increase, which roughly counters the 3 orders I was off with my 400 million years mistake. I'm not sure how to account for the 30% of the biomass that is dead. Something living will come along and eat it, but how quickly, I'm not sure. I would guess this inert biomass is not affecting things more than an order of magnitude, but that's just a guess. This whole exercise is obviously an inexact science! Johntex\^talk 17:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That equation doesn't look quite right to me. For example, why would you multiply by 1% if you thought humans were 1% of the biomass on Earth ? You should multiply by 100 instead. Of course, this is still assuming humans' cellular reproduction rate is the same as the average of all life, which is a highly questionable assumption.

I would also think you would do best to ignore humans and concentrate on life forms which have been alive for much longer than us and which have cells that reproduce much faster than us, such as bacteria. They will account for far more of the cell divisions in the history of the world than humans will. StuRat 22:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Both good points! Thanks! Johntex\^talk 21:59, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

physics and baseball

How does hitting a baseball relate towards physics? Please be specific. Thanks.

Look in the book your teacher gave you and find anything relating to "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Then, you will be able to follow the rule at the top of this page: Do your own homework. --Kainaw ^(talk) 19:32, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As a place to start, looking at Momentum couldn't hurt. I'd recommend trajectory, but my eyes glazed over half-way through a scan. GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 20:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure it doesn't relate. We have a quite good physics education here in the university, but no baseball team. – b_jonas 10:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah but if you DID ... freshgavin TALK 02:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

State of Nitrogen

What state is Nitrogen at 20 degree c please

I'll leave the abuse to somebody else...--Zeizmic 20:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A diatomic gas. given that air is about 70% Nitrogen, you'd be in trouble if it were anything else. GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 20:36, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At 20 °C, nitrogen is almost entirely in a singlet state. Physchim62 (talk) 20:40, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bah, my brain's still in High-school science mode from the previous question! :) GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 21:01, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe Wikipedia needs Reference desk:High School Homework Questions. --Kainaw ^(talk) 21:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

AKA: Reference desk:Insulting and Sarcastic Answers :-). smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 22:09, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We already have one of those--205.188.116.74 00:55, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it doesn't have to be a gas, does it? It wasn't mentioned at which pressure... TERdON

Why shouldn't ether or chloroform be used as a solvent for the titration of an ASA Tablet?

Why shouldn't ether or chloroform be used as a solvent for the titration of an ASA Tablet? --(Aytakin) | Talk 22:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Have we upgraded to university homework? My first answer would be 'Try it and find out'. --Zeizmic 23:14, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you're just going to blow off the question, please just don't leave any answer at all. The question asked was not obvioulsy a homework question. And 'try it and find out' is a pretty bad answer to many lab research questions if for no other reason than it wastes reagents (which are often purchased with taxpayer dollars).

Long story short - if you don't feel like answering questions that you think are stupid....do bother with the reference desk. It is the designated place on Wikipedia for stupid questions. ike9898 23:26, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

The statement "The question asked was not obvioulsy a homework question." assumes a lot. I work with doctors and residents all day. Never have I heard a single one sit around the break room and chat about solvents for the titration of aspirin. Neither ehter nor choloroform are sitting on the shelf at WalMart, prompting the average person to say, "Wow. I think I'll soak my aspiring in that!" So, this has to be a person who has a reason to use ether/chloroform and aspirin together. This is most likely a pharmacy student since it is a very common assignment to use methanol, ethanol, chloroform, and acetate in the titration of aspirin. --Kainaw ^(talk) 23:54, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of people who do research aren't students. In my work it is quite common to read an unfamilar experimental protocol, and not understand the reason for each of the steps. This situation genenerates questions like the one above on a regular basis. ike9898 15:17, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Of course it may have been someone's homework question, but it was not anything like the really blanant ones we get: "Explain the effects of the French Revolution on ..." Anyway, I still think that a snarky answer is worse than no answer at all. ike9898 15:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remeber the characteristics of ether and chloroform and think what problems these might cause when trying to do an accurate titration. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

January 19

Is this "book" real?

Greetings:

While looking through "Wikipedia in books" I came across this particular title:

Paulo Correa, M.Sc., Ph.D., Alexandra Correa, H.BA., Malgosia Askanas, Ph.D. (User:Helicoid) Wikipedia: A Techno-Cult of Ignorance, ISBN 1-894840-36-4

However, upon searching through Amazons I cannot find the book by its title nor the ISBN. I'm wondering : is this book for real or not?

Regards,

129.97.252.63 00:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.aetherometry.com/antiwikipedia/awp_index.html --jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 00:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow.. Those are crackpots if I ever saw one. :) --BluePlatypus 09:22, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh my... This is something special, something very special indeed... -Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 11:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.aetherometry.com/antiwikipedia2/awp2_index.html the sequel. "Wikipedia: The Rise of the Latrines" -- It's not all wrong. GangofOne 23:47, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

These guys are total nuts. See Talk:Aetherometry. They only self-publish. --Fastfission 04:59, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Insects-ants

How do we differentiate male and female ants?????

See Ant. David Sneek 08:15, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Imagine picking up an ant and trying to find its genitals. :) Hence the Dutch word 'mierenneuken' (antfucking) for making a fuss about something minute. DirkvdM 08:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just kill them all. Don't differentiate. (Anyway, I think male ants have wings.) – b_jonas 10:18, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, but so do the queens that leave the nest to start a new one. Except that they're quite a bit bigger. By the way, beware of the ant liberation front. They might want to fumigate you now. :) DirkvdM 09:13, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Title bird flu h5n1 wing and a feather

Title h5n1 bird flu wing and a feather Bird flu, on a wing, and a feather, or h5n1 is three microns think how light is that! At a community home construction site a gust of wind or sustained wind can blow two Acers of dirt into the air in 1920 the great dust bowl people in New York had to ware masks to breath to cope with the dust from the dust bowl look it up and in storms freezing air can move up to the jet streams move around the globe fast. A chicken farm, country, or cites will get high winds too. Question can this be so? If this can happen why try to stop it! Spend more money on keeping people living and make plans for removal of masses of dead. Also h5n1 at freezing temp can live forever at a temp of 32 h5n1 well live for thirty-two hours at seventy-two one hour that would make it a fact! Air born. Thank you Les Poppa ps i did watchlist i think but i did not find bookmark thank you can you help

Although this apparently is the place reserved for stupidity (whoops, intelligence-challenged, i-c), it would help for people to read the preamble and to type in full English (not texting mode). However, perhaps it is cruel to ask i-c people to read... --Zeizmic 13:10, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's no need for sarcasm. Did you consider the possibility that the poster's native language is not English? —Keenan Pepper 17:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think their question is: "If winds can blow up massive quantities of dirt from the ground, can't they also blow up massive quantities of bird-flu infected feces from poultry farms ? If so, how can we stop this from spreading bird flu ?".

The only solution I see is to keep all birds inside. StuRat 21:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remember the masks people were wearing during tha SARS scare? Surely we know by now what size face mesh to protect against the latest scare. Seriously, consider tuberculosis which is spread the same way. People have it, they cough, their spittum lands on the ground, dries up, becomes dust, which the wind picks up and blows, and other people breathe, and now they have the disease also. Used to be worldwide lots of people had that disease. Public health figured out how to stop it, then had to fight to get the right authority to enforce the solution. I figure a few thousand people will need to die in any given country before they get the right kind of authority to solve the problem. Ande then we have denial, like nations in Africa led by leaders who not accept how AIDS gets spread, so it spreads even faster. User:AlMac|^(talk) 04:17, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

bi-metallic alloy steels

wat r the points to consider while modifing a composition of a casting to make it even harder. for example I hav a casting (part) which function is reduce friction between stationary and rotating parts.

( itz name is slip seals used for kilns)

Repainting a car

Is it possible to have a car repainted a different colour? Or can car paint only be applied during the manufacturing process (because, for instance, it must be specially bonded to the metal)? Is it legal to do so in France (I presume so, even though the change probably needs to be registered with the vehicle authority, but I thought I'd better ask)? Thanks in advance! — QuantumEleven | (talk) 08:13, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, cars can be repainted, although for it to be most effective, you probably need to strip the old paint of it first. And you were right in your assumption it has potential problems. It is illegal when done to stolen cars, but I'm sure that if registered with the proper authorities it should be no problem. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Mgm! Just OOC, how would a car garage (ie a professional, not me!) strip the paint from a car without damaging the underlying structure? Sanding? Sandblasting? Solvents? — QuantumEleven | (talk) 16:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess they use solvents so as not to affect the rust-proofing underneath: hence you need to get it done in a professional workshop that has suitable ventilation and safety equipment. In France, you would need to change the carte grise (registration document) at your local Préfecture: I don't know if they charge for this. Physchim62 (talk) 18:32, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, cars can be repainted a different colour from the original and no, the old paint need not be removed first. What the car repainter (body-shop) does is lightly sand the original surface and then fine-finish (compound) to provide a smooth surface. Next a primer (optional) is sprayed on, painted, baked (optional) and clear-coated (optional). If you want to know if a car has been repainted with a defferent colour look at the underside of the trunk lid (hardly ever repainted). hydnjo talk 21:22, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bitmap Images

Which two types of bitmap images are used most often on the internet? Thanks for your time. J.

81.96.4.136 10:30, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say the JPEG and the GIF, though PNG files are also fairly common. GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 12:08, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know ... JPEGs aren't considered bitmapped images! (1 bit space for 1 pixel) I'm not sure about the PNG file format though. freshgavin TALK 01:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly speaking, none of those formats are bitmap formats, as they do not directly correspond to an array of pixels. However, all of them are raster image formats, which was almost certainly what was intended (as opposed to vector graphics). —David Wahler (talk) 02:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, the most common real bitmap formats are probably portable pixmap and Windows bitmap. —Keenan Pepper 18:59, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where did "I" come from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_(electricity) You state that "The symbol typically used for the amount of current (the amount of charge Q flowing per unit of time t) is I, from the German word Intensität, which means 'intensity'.".

Which confuses me especially since André-Marie Ampère is french.

I have looked high and low, but I cannot find a reference to prove (or disprove) where the "I" was derived. Can you help me with a solid reference?

Thank you, Eugene

It comes from the word "intensity", or "intensität" or "intensité". Ampère himself used the phrase "l'intensité du courant électrique". See his writings. --BluePlatypus 12:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Planet X

Why is it that neither Pluto nor the Kuiper Belt are Planet X? The Planet X article describes this but it does not explain how this is infered mexaguil 11:04, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pluto's mass was too small to fit the Planet X hypothesis, and the hypothesis itself has been disproven by more correct measurements of the outer planets' masses. This is both mentioned in the Planet X article, by the way :) -- Ferkelparade π 11:29, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

mutiplex,hub switch,and router

i want to know what difference between multiplex,hub switch and router?please help me...

You should start with our articles on multiplex, hub, switch, and router. Some or all may lead to other subjects than networking, but there should also be a "for other uses of <article>, please see..." link at the top. — Lomn Talk 13:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why do the wheel of a car looks to rotate reverse at some speed

This isn't just limited to the wheels of a car - you can also see it in LPs, for instance. I believe it's due to an interference effect, which occurs because your eyes only have a limited "refresh rate" (ie they only pick up new information at a certain rate, approximately ten times a second IIRC). If the wheel has repeating radial markings (eg spokes), if it spins at a certain speed, your eyes think that each spoke has moved slightly backwards when in fact it's the previous spoke which has not quite reached the position of the next one in the time it takes your eyes to take in new information. So your eyes are telling you that the spokes are actually moving slowly backwards... — QuantumEleven | (talk) 14:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good question. It's answered under Wagon-wheel effect. It's best seen on old John Wayne movies. --Zeizmic 15:17, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that link, Zeizmic - it's a far better description than I managed to cook up! — QuantumEleven | (talk) 16:55, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also note that fluorescent street lights may cause the Wagon-wheel effect on car wheels. StuRat 20:38, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder why it is that the wagon-wheels seem to drift backwards much more often than forward. Is there a wagon-wheel coriolis like effect going on here? ;-) hydnjo talk 21:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's just a function of the frame rate, the number of spokes, and the rate of rotation of the wheels. I also suspect that we only notice when the wheels appear to be going backwards, and ignore the less interesting cases where they appear to be going forwards, but at a slower rate. StuRat 22:29, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

website navigation

What is the importance of having alternative methods of site navigation?

Thanks,in anticipation81.96.4.136 15:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For accessibility purposes. Text links, for instance, are important for screen readers (which tend to operate much like the old Lynx browser). Hotkeyed links are helpful for users who eschew the mouse. Non-Flash navigation is essential for users without Flash. — Lomn Talk 15:57, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think having a site map is quite valuable. Without it, the user may have to wade through many pages and wait for graphics to load, close pop-up windows, etc., to eventually find the page they want. StuRat 20:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Or wade through many pages to discover that the site only contains graphics, pop-up windoes, etc... and no content. --Kainaw ^(talk) 20:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, that's even worse. StuRat 07:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Contrary to what some people beleive, not everyone uses the same browser, so having alternative means to access a site means more people will be able to visit it. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:50, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shavers

In Britain everything uses 13-amp plugs except for electric shavers which for some reason use two pin plugs. Why is this, and why is it only for electric shavers? smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 15:10, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

British Standard 1363 makes it illegal for any three-pin plug sockets to be installed in a bathroom due to risk of electrocution. The socket for razors is covered by BS EN 60742 Chapter 2, Section 1 - which allows for their installation only where direct spray from showers is unlikely. GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 15:37, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This may be incredibly daft of me, but how does a three-pin plug socket (where the three wires are, presumably, live, neutral and earth) increase the risk of electrocution? If you come into contact with a live wire, the electricity will flow through you into the Earth, electrocuting you. This would happen regardless of the presence of an earth plug socket or not. Indeed, presuming the main transmission risk in a bathroom is through water, wouldn't an earth plug (a three-pin plug socket) reduce the risk of electrocution, because water which would transmit electricity from the socket into you would probably come into contact with the earth plug socket as well, thereby shorting the circuit directly to the earth plug, and blowing the fuse before the electricity goes through you? What am I missing? — QuantumEleven | (talk) 16:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think your missing the point, i thinks its more to do with having a different plug in the bathroom so you don't get tempted to put your plasma screen in there.

Have they invented GFI's in Britain yet? --Zeizmic 17:31, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Our article BS 1363 gives some description and this article says that the standard BS 1363 is to be installed throughout (no bathroom exception). A point of confusion may be interchanging the words outlet (on the wall) and plug (on the device). The outlet requires that a third prong on the plug (device) be present and inserted into the outlet in order for the other two plug prongs to be allowed "in". Since double insulated devices (electric shavers, hair dryers, etc) don't really need this third "earth/ground" connection for safety, those devices may use a non-conducting (plastic) prong in order to open the outlet for the other two prongs on the device to be allowed in. Back to the original question, device manufacturers have devised some proprietary workarounds that permit their double insulated devices to be inserted while having only two prongs and I suspect that is what Smurrayinchester was referring to.hydnjo talk 19:47, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Worlds highest horse jump

how high was the world tallest horse jump?and a picture possibly?

According to [18] (Which has pictures), the highest official jump by a horse was 8ft 2 inches, or 2.47 meters. Unofficially it may have been 8ft 3 1/2 inches GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 15:25, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Combining wired and wireless computers on one network

I want to add a wireless laptop to my wired home network. Do I need a wireless router or a wireless access point - or can I use either? 68.115.110.13 17:15, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have a mixture at home -- no problem. Do your homework before buying! --Zeizmic 17:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are many wired/wireless combo home network kits (hubs, switches, routers -- whatever marketing wants to call them). They are easy to install and easy to use. Just make sure you read the section on wireless security setup. I set mine up so only my laptop's wireles NIC is allowed to join the wireless network. --Kainaw ^(talk) 18:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A wireless access point is sufficient. A wireless router is really a combo of access point, firewall, DCHP server, and several other things. However, your wired network is likely centered around a home router that already provides all of the above save for the wireless access point, so there's no need to duplicate that functionality.

That said, most wireless routers can be configured to run as access points, and should the wired router then die, you can reset the wireless to full-featured mode and you'll have an immediate replacement hardware piece. — Lomn Talk 18:13, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

computer sciences

what kind Future trends are there for artificial intelligence? give some ideas or exapmles of what there is going to be or what you think.

from J.L

Please do your own homework. --GraemeL ^(talk) 17:50, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is plenty of info in artificial intelligence. --Kainaw ^(talk) 18:07, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They'll soon replace us and answer all questions here on the Reference Desk. – b_jonas 16:15, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Determining which wire is hot and which is neutral

The wiring in my house is very old, so the wires aren't color coded (they're all black). I was replacing a 2-prong receptacle and I couldn't determine which was the hot wire. I assumed I could do this with my multimeter. However either way I connected the multimeter leads to the wires, the meter read +120V. (I guess this is something about AC that I don't completely understand). But anyway.....How can I determine which is the 'hot' wire? It does matter, doesn't it? ike9898 18:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can buy an outlet tester at your local hardware store. They're pretty cheap. --jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 18:13, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As for what you're seeing, the multimeter is reading, if I recall correctly, RMS AC voltage, which doesn't care about the alternating polarity. You might check out alternating current and single-phase electric power for some extra reading on what's running around in there. As for "it does matter, doesn't it?": If you mean the eventual connection's left/right orientation, no, it doesn't matter. — Lomn Talk 18:21, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If I'm not mistaken, it does matter-- if the outlet is being upgraded to the new-style polarized two-prong grounded variety. You wouln't want to put the hot lead on the ground prong, would you?--Mark Bornfeld DDS 19:22, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The concept is right but the terminology is wrong. A polarized two-prong plug has a hot or live wire and a "cold", neutral, or return wire. In the US/Canadian system, the hot wire should connect to the smaller of the two parallel slots. "Ground prong" refers to the third prong on a three-prong (grounded) plug. --Anonymous, 21:45 UTC, January 19, 2006.

Use the multimeter to measure the voltage between each of the wires (one at a time) to "ground". You may need to get creative about how you connect the multimeter to "ground" as the outlet box itself may not be "grounded". A nearby radiator or cold water pipe will do. Anyway when the meter is connected between the hot wire and "ground" it will show the line (120) voltage and will register nearly (or exactly) zero volts from the other black wire to ground. hydnjo talk 19:37, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is correct. Note that if you don't find a good ground, you will get a zero reading between either wire and whatever else you try. In that case you may need to run a wire to another room where you can connect it to your plumbing system, and use that as your ground. Only when you have ground to one wire reading near 0 and ground to the other wire reading near 120 can you be sure you have the right wire.

Rather than working with the bare wires, if the old outlet is still working it is safer to leave it in place and insert a meter probe into one slot rather than contacting that wire. But make sure they don't accidentally break contact and give a false 0 reading. --Anonymous

Could I use the current setting on my multimeter to determine which is which? ike9898 22:04, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No! The voltage setting actually measures current, but through a large (known) resistance. The current setting just removes the resistance; it's meant to be used with the meter wired in series with a normal load. --Anonymous, 07:09 UTC, January 20.

It's a fundamental thing with AC, you can't tell which is which with just the 2 wires (symmetry). You need a third ground, which is what the polarized plug is protecting you from (I work at a power company). In other words, if you are screwing in a lightbulb, the outside thread should be neutral and should not allow yourself to become a short to ground. My hundred-year old house had this really bad wiring, and I had it all replaced. It's not worth your life! You know you are in trouble if you feel 'tingle' voltage from your fridge. One day you'll be turning off the tap at the same time as closing the fridge and POW! --Zeizmic 23:15, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand. Someone above suggested that a cheap tester from the hardware store could tell...from just one wire, if I understand correctly. This seems to contradict your answer. Can you straiten me out? ike9898 00:52, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, there are such things as contact-free voltage detectors. These can be used to detect a live AC wire without any grounding. We don't seem to have an article on them, though, or else I just don't know the correct English name. Here's an example, though: [19] —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:32, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The original question asked about using a multimeter, which measures voltages between its two contacts. Using a multimeter you must have a ground. The detectors just described work differently. I think they are based on the capacitance of your own body and detect the tiny AC current that flows thorugh the detector when you touch it to a live AC wire while holding it. If there is no ground nearby, it would be more convenient to obtain one of these. --Anonymous, 07:15 UTC, January 20.

I would have thought the contact-free detectors detect the radio waves? —Keenan Pepper 19:12, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. The detector I was thinking of when I mentioned capacitance, you touch one end of it to the wire while holding the other end, but you don't need to be grounded. My father used to have one. That reminds me, I have to call him... thanks. If there's also one that doesn't require touching the wire at all, it would probably be detecting the changing electric field around the wire. Do these exist cheaply for household power levels? --Anonymous, 17:48 UTC, January 20. power levels? --Anonymous, 17:48 UTC, January 20.

My multimeter has a button labeled NCV (non-contact voltage?). If you hold the meter within about 2 inches of a live wire, it will chirp. This multimeter was middle-of-the-road at the time when I bought it. ike9898 21:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And it works by radio waves, right? —Keenan Pepper 23:40, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quantum Mechanics and David Deutsch

Is QM just theoretical? or is it reasonable to say that our world at that level is actually that weird...I doubt people that are so sure about that, like mystics, because I think QM is described by mathematical formluas which we may be missunderstanding somehow, or something like a hidden variable might be underneath all that QM weirdness.--Cosmic girl 19:19, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the basics of QM are widely accepted by the scientific community, so in this sense "it is real". However, I agree that I find certain extensions unsatisfactory, like the idea that knowledge of an event actually effects the event (as in the Schrodinger's cat experiment where they claim the cat is both alive and dead, perhaps in alternate universes, until the box is opened). Maybe some later addition to QM will remove this weirdness. StuRat 20:04, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

great, I agree, but for example, what do you think about David Deutsch? I don't know if I missunderstood the article, but How can an infinite computation (software and information) be possible without a computer (hardware)to contain it? here is one quote of his: Think of all our knowledge-generating processes, our whole culture and civilization, and all the thought processes in the minds of every individual, and indeed the entire evolving biosphere as well, as being a gigantic computation. The whole thing is executing a self-motivated, self-generating computer program. More specifically it is, as I have mentioned, a virtual-reality program in the process of rendering, with ever-increasing accuracy, the whole of existence. I don't understand what he means since he is an atheist and that sounds a lot like abstract and uncomprehensible mysticism and absolutism to me. other way to put it would be the way he said it, but stressing that there's a reality outside that whole of existence he talks about, because that whole of existence mus be being computed somewhere otherwise it would be just God. I mean, how can a virtual reality be self generating? i think it can only be so from a 'pantheist' view...but not from a virtual reality view, since that requires an outside world I think.--Cosmic girl 20:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As for the "self-generating" reality, it is possible for a simple system to become increasing more complex, such as when laminar flow turns into turbulance, provided that some microscopic "nucleation site" exists to start the process. Crystal formation from a supersaturated solution has a similar requirement. However, I don't know of any way to explain how something can come, literally, from nothing. As far as I understand it, there must always be some "seed" to start anything. StuRat 22:21, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, some elements of physics make no sense without quantum physics, such as certain characteristics of light and photons. But most likely that quote is based either on new age mystical beliefs or way too much Matrix... smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 20:55, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The quote is probably out of context to some degree, but the way I'd interpret it based on what you've quoted is that he thinks the "program" is producing an ever-increasingly accurate model of "the whole of existence". I don't see what that would have to do with QM, though. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:21, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't read to much into QM. It's just physics, not metaphysics. There's a lot of new-agey stuff out there trying to make it into more than it is. If you're really interested in QM you should learn it from physics books and stay far, far, away from the 'philosophial' stuff. Quantum mech is not a philosophy. It is not even terribly weird. It's just that things on a very very small scale turn out to behave very differently than things that are on a human scale. So humans find it weird. But building a philosophy around that is just silly, like how the Pythagoreans built a whole philosophy/religion around geometry. --BluePlatypus 12:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IBM Labs built a quantum computer some time ago. It does not do much, but certainly indicates to me this stuff is not some science fiction fantasy. User:AlMac|^(talk) 04:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chemistry Problem

Okay, I've finished the rest of the worksheet, but i really don't know how to find the grams per mole (gfm) of barium chlorate Ba(ClO₃)₂. Anyway. Can anyone please explain this to me? It's supposed to be 304 but I don't know how to do it.

Well, your know the molar masses of the elements involved, right? Then you just need to count how many atoms of each element the compound contains, multiply the masses by those, and add them together. Or is there some problem I've missed? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:15, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm...I still don't understand, sorry. Can you explain it step by step?

A mole is just a certain number of atoms, a number chosen so that the number of grams per mole is the same as the molecular weight (in atomic mass units). Let's say the chemical was sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Hydrogen has atomic weight 1.008 (also called atomic mass; it is really a weighted average of the masses of different isotopes). Sulfur has atomic weight 32.065. Oxygen has atomic weight 15.999. The molecular weight is 1.008×2 + 32.065 + 15.999×4 = 98.077. So sulfuric acid has 98.077 grams per mole, if I haven't slipped up. You will need to work to the appropriate precision for your purposes, of course. --Anonymous, 22:00 UTC, January 19, 2006.

thanks!

Now that's a very nice specific homework aspect we like to see (and a thank-you!) Nobody here is above helping with a sticking point in a homework question. --Zeizmic 23:23, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The primary difference is that the question was not: "Do my homework for me." It was "Show me how to do my homework." --Kainaw ^(talk) 00:14, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I actually bother to read the rules!

Horror Story

On the busride home today, I heard something I have to ask about. It fits the traditional Urban Legend model, even makes use of some of the old plot standbys; so it's unlikely that it's true, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. It supposedly happened to a friend of someone who had theatre class with one of the people on my bus. Here's how it goes, more or less:

Some guy was eating out a girl who had crabs, which I assume he wasn't aware of. There was an icecube involved, though details weren't mentioned on that score. At some point he swallowed something that he assumed was the ice cube. A few days/weeks later, the area of his face around his mouth started "breaking out", and he went to the doctor. As it turned out, he had gotten a crab infestation under his lips. As it later turned out, he had swallowed a "sac of eggs", and the hatched crabs came up his esophagus and out his mouth because they "couldn't make it in his stomach."

So, here are my questions. Are there guys who would do that knowingly? What would happen to crabs in your mouth? The pubic lice article says eggs are laid individually, so a "sac of eggs" is ridiculous, but is there anything that could be swallowed? What would happen to eggs in the stomach? In the esophagus? What about hatched crabs? It seems unlikely that any of them could survive the horrible chemicals in the human stomach, but if they could, wouldn't they get flushed into the intestine? --Black Carrot 21:31, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lice are transmitted by close personal contact. If there is any truth to your narrative, it is possible that the recipient merely acquired the infestation by direct contact rather than ingestion. This is more likely if he had facial hair. Most human parasites are quite limited in their ability to survive outside their accustomed habitat, which is on the surface of hair-bearing skin for the pubic louse. They cannot survive in the stomach or the mouth for any length of time.

Now, as to whether a guy would swallow crab lice knowingly-- we'll probably find out next season on Fear Factor ;-)--Mark Bornfeld DDS 22:07, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Head and body lice can live anywhere on the body. The lice we slangily refer to as crabs are mostly confined to the pubic region. They can survive elsewhere on the body (primarily the armpits), but they will not thrive. So, it is reasonable that they could survive for a few life-cycles in a mustache or beard.

They will not survive in the mouth. They live on hair. I seriously doubt the man had hair growing inside his mouth.

They do not lay egg sacs (as a spider does). The female will lay about 40 eggs, attached to the hairs. They are very tightly attached. That is why combing will not remove them. So, the idea that someone swallowed a lice egg sac shows a complete ignorance about lice. Regardless, the stomach acid in a human will dissolve and digest an egg sac - which would be full of some good protein. So, the man would benefit from the ordeal in the end. --Kainaw ^(talk) 00:23, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It always feels good to hear a horror story is bull. As far as the 'naked eye', what do pubic lice look like, individually and en masse? Black Carrot 04:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe lice and eggs can be seen with the naked eye, but, in the case of eggs, since they are still and close to the size of a human hair, it takes a keen eye and a lot of patience to look for them. StuRat 06:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When magnified, pubic lice look like crabs - which is why they are called crabs. The eggs look like off-white yellowish bumps on the side of the hair itself. They are firmly attached to the hair and cannot be removed by combing, rubbing, washing - or anything like that. Shaving is the best method for removing the eggs. But, as the nurse told us in Boot Camp - you've got to shave it all like a Brazilian model. --Kainaw ^(talk) 13:58, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I've realized there are a few things I'm still not clear about. How long would they survive in the mouth and/or esophagus, or stuck on or between the teeth? Before they died, would they have the chance to bite you, and cause a rash? Black Carrot 02:17, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

HealthCare system of canada

Can i have your opinion on canada'a health care system? I've read that canada's federal and provincial government has no longer effective control over its healthcare system. what are the doctors reaction over this system? Are they satisfied with their income plannings? Can you throw some light on this issue and let me have some information about it. thanks!

Very polite question, but this is not the place for it. --Zeizmic 23:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've only worked with one doctor from Canada. She didn't like it much and refused to return after working in our U.S. hospital system. But, I can't claim it is strictly the hospital system. I also work with doctors from Nigeria, Syria, Israel, and China. They don't return either. There is no way the U.S. hospital system is that great. I think they just enjoy how spoiled everyone is here. --Kainaw ^(talk) 00:27, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean they didn't return to their native country or didn't return to the U.S.? --AySz88^-^ 03:52, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe they meant they remain in the US instead of returning to their native countries, presumably due to the higher pay rate in the US. StuRat 06:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. They remain here in the U.S. as long as possible. It is not just the higher pay. Many of them went to school in the U.S. on student loans. By law, if they move out of the U.S., they are not required to pay back the loan. So, they accept the debt payments as a fee to remain in the U.S. instead of returning to their previous country. Personally, I'd move back for a few years until the student loan people forgot me and then return to the U.S. to cash in on the M.D. degree. --Kainaw ^(talk) 13:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It partially depends on what kind of doctor they are. I can give details of my family doctor. A couple years ago, he made about $270,000 (the figures are released by the govenment). Out of that, he has to pay for his staff (2 nurses), his overhead of office space, supplies, etc. This is a very good GP with a large client base, and he's about average. He's told me he's had offers from the US for easily triple his take-home pay, with less hours (and his take-home would be taxed less). As he's a terrific GP, I'm just fortunate that he just prefers to live in Canada, but it's not hard to see why many GP's try to work in the US. I have no idea how specialists compare. - Dharmabum420 23:39, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

January 20

Self-replicating machines

Are there any examples or models of machines that can construct themselves? (A machine that once constructed can build a working model of itself which can thus repeat the process.) I'm assuming at least that the raw materials needed would be readily available. I can imagine how this might be possible on a very small scale, using the aid of natural forces for power and movement, but my mind starts to bend past that. freshgavin TALK 01:12, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, not in the Matrix sense. I think we are at the perpetual '20 years from that' stage, much like commercial fusion power. --Zeizmic 01:54, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ask me by 2020, 2025 at the latest. Which is a firm date, and less than 20 years.

MSTCrow 04:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't implying the 'Matrix sense' or anything like that. I've read some interesting articles on it, specifying the basic parts a machine would be required to have in order to be able to create a copy of itself. Though it's a little beyond me (it's kind like of a combination of high level mechanics, organics, artificial intelligence design, and physics) I agree it does look like there's some sort of 'perpetual' 20 years in-the-future effect.

I was merely entertaining the thought that it would be rather cost effective to send a self-replicating robot with the ability to follow simple instructions and build structures as well as copies of itself to the polar caps of the moon using the materials it mines from beneath the surface. It also would probably be cost effective if they could build solar-panels but I have a feeling that you can't build that kind of stuff from raw materials on the moon! freshgavin TALK 04:39, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See clanking replicator and nanotechnology for Wikipedia's take on the matter. I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a self-replicator, but "desktop manufacturing" is likely to become increasingly sophisticated over the coming decades. --Robert Merkel 04:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, clanking replicator is exactly what I was looking for. Turns out NASA did a comprehensive study for the exact thing I just mentioned in the 1980s. (Not only that, the article outlines that the materials for making solar cells are, in fact, supposed available on the moon.) freshgavin TALK 05:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose a self-replicating robot is available today...provided it is supplied with two halfs of a robot and merely needs to plug the halfs togther. A robot that could assemble another from components down to chips and screws is a few decades off. A robot that could assemble another starting from mining the raw materials, smelting them, etc., might not be available for centuries. StuRat 05:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A few months ago on tv I saw a system of blocks that were connected in a cluster of about six and that could move and click onto other blocks in such a way that after a while you had two clusters, identical to the first one. This was, however, extremely simple and very slow and the new blocks had to be placed in the right position for the cluster to pick them up (a typical assemblage issue that is one of the biggest problems in factory automation). But it's a start. There was also a webpage on this, but I can't find that now. DirkvdM 08:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There have been quite a few tests similar to that, generally for the purpose of AI study. And StuRat, I think you're thinking too narrowly. Don't think of a big robot with arms that uses a solder gun and screws with its fingers; think of a robotic single-cell-size machine that can replicate in a mannar similar to that of organism where the raw materials are readily available. At that level the difference between a self-assembling robot and a self-replicating robot are almost negligable. freshgavin TALK 11:43, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you have time, try reading Prey by Michael Crichton. In that, nanobots are created that can kill things, break them down, and turn them into swarms of nanobots that can continue the cycle. In general, that would be the fear about anything self-replicating: it might not be stoppable, and it might be dangerous to us if you don't design it carefully. Not his best work, but not bad. Black Carrot 13:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Depending on your definition of machines, and whether it is acceptable that the children can do the same stuff but are not identical, you might review what goes on in the world of plands and animals with respect to the fact that they do reproduce themselves by having children that have children to infinity. Seriously, the nanotechnology, nanotube area is growing so rapidly, it is hard to keep up with all that is going on, but it seems to me is at a building blocks stage. Also look at the human genome project, and what that has done to biomedical research. User:AlMac|^(talk) 04:26, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was using the word 'machines' in the most general sense ... e.g. 'man-made'. I really think that we're not far away from creating 'working' nano-Cyanobacteria (basically have the ability to input, output, and multiply) or something similar, and once we can do that then everything else will come relatively quickly and it should be a really interesting time for science. freshgavin TALK 11:23, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Direct domain

Is it possible to get a domain name direct from ICANN or IANA? --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 01:40, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, you need to go through a registrar. (Unless you're international organisation and are getting a .int domain name, in which case you would go directly to IANA. But I'm guessing you're not ;-) ) -- AJR | Talk 19:00, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

intelligent design

The intelligent design article is a little confusing re: capitalization. Even though "intelligent design" is lowercase within the article, it is uppercase in the title. I believe this is the result of technical limitations with the wiki software, as is the case with the iPod article. So, shouldn't there be a similar notice at the top of the page? If so, could someone add it? --JianLi 01:49, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, the capitalization is correct; "intelligent design" is ordinarily not capitalized inside a sentence, but the first "I" is capitalized when it is the first word of a sentence. These are the usual capitalization rules in English. The "technical limitations" notice applies only to names with invariant capitalization that would not be capitalized even at the start of a sentence. --Trovatore 01:54, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I see. Thanks --JianLi 02:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not really a question, just a related note: I came across an AP news article [20], which states "In a June article in the British Catholic magazine The Tablet, Coyne reaffirmed God's role in creation, but said science explains the history of the universe." I think the dating of the article as "June" is a mistake. The article in question is here, and has the date as "06/08/2005" or 6 August 2005. The mistake seems to stem from the difference between American/European dating conventions, which have reverse month/day orders (the aritcle was written in a British publication). --JianLi 02:33, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's why Wiki doesn't stick to either convention : ). freshgavin TALK 04:51, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Windows Mobile programming for free?

I'm wondering what free options there are for software development for the Pocket PC/Windows Mobile platform. The official Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK requires Visual Studio Standard Edition, which would set me back about $300. (Unfortunately, the free Express Edition doesn't include support for mobile devices.)

I know there are many free compilers and development environments for Palm OS, including a port of GCC, and I was rather surprised when a bit of Googling didn't turn up anything similar for Pocket PCs. There's Superwaba, but I'd much prefer to be able to compile native C code if possible. Any suggestions? —David Wahler (talk) 01:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Would the SDK by any chance function with the Express versions of the Studio applications?

MSTCrow 04:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately not--that was the first thing I checked. Thanks, though. —David Wahler (talk) 11:49, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What are microvesicles?

google Vesicle (biology) Liposome David D. (Talk) 05:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Feeling kinda phlegmy

Ok, so my voice is really weird. I don't know what's up. It already changed once and now I think it might be changing again. It feels like my throat is full of flem and I've coughed up some but no matter how much theraflu I take I can't seem to clear it up at all. I got a small cough and my nose is a little runny but it's barely happening. This has been going on for like 3 days.

What can I do to clear up throat phlegm?

An expectorant is used to clear the throat of phlegm. I'm not sure if TheraFlu contains an expectorant or not. Also, bear in mind that phlegm in the throat is a symptom of a repiratory infection, so will go away when the condition causing it clears up, or shortly thereafter. StuRat 05:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like it would be better to ask a doctor for medical advice than a bunch of random people on a message board. Black Carrot 13:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need a doctor to tell you that an expectorant is used on a phlegm-producing cough. In the U.S., cough medicines marked with DM have dextromethorphan, which is a very good expectorant. Don't take the whole bottle unless you enjoy running from the purple bunnies. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hydroxylapatite

The tooth enamel page states that tooth enamel is hydroxylapatite. The Hydroxylapatite article discusses how hydroxylapatite is sometimes used as a bone filling in some medical procedures. This begs the question (for me, anyway): Why isn't hydroxylapatite used as a dental filling? (I previously asked this question on the talk pages of dental filling and hydroxylapatite. Both articles would benefit from a mention of the answer, if anyone knows.) Regards - Tempshill 06:39, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One thought that comes to mind is that tooth enamel wasn't tough enough to stand the conditions in the patients mouth, so something better is needed. StuRat 07:15, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like hydroxylapatite compounds are used to me: [21] for example.GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 09:59, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, tooth enamel is predominantly composed of hydroxyapatite, with a minor amount of organic component. The reason it is not used as a restorative dental material is that it cannot be cast, pressed, or otherwise shaped into solid forms that can accurately fit the cavity of a tooth. It also cannot be placed and adapted into a cavity in a plastic state (as can, for example, dental amalgam).

It is unfortunate that hydroxyapatite cannot, at least with current technology, be used as a dental restorative material. Fillings made of this material would have many physical properties (strength, hardness, and coefficient of thermal expansion) that would make it ideal.

Hydroxyapatite (Calcitite) and other mineral bone analogues are used in bone grafting applications, but not primarily for their physical properties. It is more for their relatively high biocompatibility, and their ability to form a physical scaffold on which new bone can form and fill in. Unfortunately, there is no analogous process that occurs in teeth. When enamel is injured, it must be repaired with artificial materials-- it does not heal, as does bone.--Mark Bornfeld DDS 19:12, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

chemistry

are all compounds of carbon,hydrogen and oxygen(like sugar,glucose,etc.)sweet???why is it so?

thank you

Erm...no. Formaldehyde certainly isn't sweet, and neither (with some exceptions) are the other simple aldehydes, alcohols, carboxylic acids, ethers, etc. However, most sugars are. See Sweetness for the most prevalent theory regarding the causes. GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 09:44, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, humans are made largely of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and some of those aren't so sweet. (Then again, luckily, some are). DirkvdM 09:19, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vinegar (ethanoic acid) is a good example. It consists of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen, but no-one would ever say that it tastes sweet... smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 09:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just to suggest that H,C,O doesn't imply organic compound, think of bicarbonates (HCO3). They aren't sweet. deeptrivia (talk) 14:44, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rabbit sex ratios

I'm trying to find information about the sex ratios of European rabbits. Normally I'd simply google rabbit "sex ratio" but because I'm at school our system keeps blocking this search term so I can't view the results! Please, if you have any information for me, provide reference links. Thank you. --195.194.74.92 10:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC) [reply]

Try:

rabbit "gender ratio"

This will get by the censors and will also avoid studies on preferred sexual positions, practices, and orientations of rabbits, LOL. StuRat

Oddly enough, our school blocks everything but Google, so you can look at hardcore porn through the image search but can't reach an arcade site directly. It turns out, though, that -rabbit "sex ratio"- doesn't return anything out of the ordinary. 198.62.217.2 13:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you can get hold of the latest Economist, there is a really good article on the sex ratios of an endangered ground parrot. This brings in all the latest thoughts on the environmental impact on sex ratios, and would apply to most populations. --Zeizmic 14:40, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

After Fibonacci, we know that rabbits only occur in pairs, so there must be the same amount of male and female rabbits. :) – b_jonas 16:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

O/I symbols for on and off on many electronic devices

You know the O/I symbols used for 'on' and 'off' on many electronic devices? An electrician recently told me that these originated from the German words aus and ein. This doesn't really make sense to me because, of course, aus doesn't start with and 'O', and ein doesn't start with an 'I'. Is this the real explanation? If not, do you know what the real explanation is?

Personally I just always assumed that it was a zero and a one. Since a power switch is Binary by nature it just seemed to make sense. It'd also be the most international way of indicating on and off. --BluePlatypus 15:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it stands for an open or a closed loop? —Ruud 15:18, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I second the binary interpretation, anyone in computing knows 0 means off and 1 means on. If you interpreted 0 as a closed loop this would counter the fact that the 0 position represents an open loop. What I don't get is the icon starting to show up on more and more devices meaning 'on or off' that is a 0 with a 1 superimposed in the top of it. Does this have any more significant meaning beyond taking up less space compared to printing '0/1'?

Yes, the difference is that the 0 superimposed over the 1 means it's a toggle switch. Press it once to turn it on, press it again to turn it off - the button is both "on" and "off", while other two-way switches use the 0 for off and the 1 for on. —EatMyShortz 08:07, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Computers used to have jumper connectors. If you connected power to a jumper, it was written in the logic charts as a "1" (the numeric 'one'). If it was left unconnected, it was written as a "0" (the numeric 'zero'). Jumpers were great, but sometimes switches were used. Too much hardware and wiring, but the idea is the same. When the switch is on, it is a 1. When it is off, it is a 0. That has stuck. A 1 is on. A 0 is off. Of course, people keep having babies and those babies keep losing more and more of our history. So, they make up things, such as Americans getting the 1 and 0 from a similar appearance to I and O which have almost nothing to do with the German "aus" and "ein". --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, in German ein can mean either "on" or "one". ("Ein, zwei, drei, ...") Me, I had also heard that there was some connection to the German, but it might be an urban legend or some other kind of pernicious false meme. Steve Summit (talk) 02:52, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Both BluePlatypus and Rund are correct. These labels are usually found on what might be considered a "toggle switch" (meaning basicall a two position switch). Answers.com defines a "toggle switch" as "A switch that uses a toggle joint with a spring to open or close an electric circuit as an attached lever is pushed through a small arc." Binary numbers are just a collection of open and closed circuits. The closed circuit would correspond to a binary "1", and an open circuit would correspond t a binary "0". Nowadays, as "digital" culture becomes pervasive, you may even find these labels carrying over to other places, such as on a software button that is meant to convey the idea of a toggle switch. There is no connection to the German language, or to any language other than that of logic and binary. Johntex\^talk 15:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kainaw - thanks for the good bit of history! I had almost forgotten about jumper switches myself. I think that the 0/1 superimposition is used primarily for switches that are push-button. As you look at the device, if we consider the x axis to be left-right side, the y axis to be the top-bottom, and the z axis to be towards-away from you - there may be a push-button power switch that moves only in the z dimension. It would be difficult to label the two seperate positions since they are "in" and "out". Therefore, the two symbols are combined into one symbol to show that the switch still has those two states, even though it would be difficult to label them seperately. Johntex\^talk 15:53, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The electrician probably meant that the Germand words 'aus' and 'ein' were translated into English, as 'out' and 'in', which do start with 'O' and 'I'. DirkvdM 09:35, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Of course the 'ein' meaning 'one' doesn't hack because 'aus' doesn't mean 'two'. And, by the way, 'ein' can mean 'in', 'a/an' or 'one', but 'one' can also be 'eins' and I don't really know when which is used ("eins, zwei, drei, vier" would sound the same and I really think that that is what is said when marching). DirkvdM 09:45, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Identifying prescription medication by imprint

I had a Hydrocodone/Apap 7.5/500 prescription filled at CVS, and received tablets with "M358" imprinted on them. Is this the correct imprint for these tablets? I can't find this information through a Google search, because apparently I am the only person on the internet who *already has* Lortab. I wanted to make sure that the dosage was correct.

Your local library will probably have a copy of the Physician's Desk Reference. Rmhermen 17:50, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here you go. rxlist.com has a useful drug imprint lookup. --jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 18:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to my drug guide here, M358 on a white oblong pill is Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen 7.5/500 by Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. --Kainaw ^(talk) 21:14, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

GPS on an aircraft

Does anyone know if it's ok to use a regular hand-held GPS receiver on a commercial aircraft? And would it work properly? Thanks --Shantavira 19:15, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've used mine, it's hilarious. It doesn't transmit and is no worse than a laptop, so you don't have it on during takeoffs and landings. --Zeizmic 20:40, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How come it doesn't transmit? enochlau (talk) 23:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What would you expect it to transmit? It's a receiver, like a radio or television. — Knowledge Seeker দ 23:58, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but for many years you were (and for all I know still are) forbidden to use ordinary AM and FM radio receivers on airplanes. If I remember correctly, this was because of the possibility that the oscillators in the superheterodyne circuits in those radios could, under certain circumstances, radiate enough RF energy to interfere with the plane's own radio signals. I doubt that a GPS receiver has that potentiality, but I can't rule it out, and for someone who remembers that they're not supposed to use radios on airplanes, it would be a reasonable conclusion to believe that GPS receivers are verboten, too. Steve Summit (talk) 02:43, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly. I was replying to the question immediately above my comment, not the original question. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:42, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's assuming you don't mean 'use it for actually navigating the aircraft'. That's a whole different ballgame. DJ Clayworth 21:57, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the GPSers with straps for bicycles will fit right onto the frame of many ultralight aircraft. My father got one last year for his. I suppose you could use velcro to attach the other kind. Rmhermen 01:15, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They really need to add enough shielding to wires in aircraft so they can be confidant they won't be so fragile as to be taken out by a cell phone or GPS unit. If they can't take those weak signals, what hope do they have of surviving an electrical storm or a solar flare ? StuRat 04:35, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article GPS says that you can use them on airplanes. It doesn't present a simple explanation on how the receivers work. We need a 'GPS for the Happily Ignorant'. :) --Zeizmic 14:25, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

January 21

Floating on air

In the aerogel article, it says newer forms of silica aerogel have a density of 1.9 mg/cm³, which, if I have done my math correctly, is 1.9 kg/m³. On the carbon dioxide page, it lists CO₂ as having a density of 1.98 kg/m³ at 298K (25C). Does this mean that solid aerogel would float on carbon dioxide, or have I misstepped somewhere? --Superiority 10:03, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds right to me. Your "floating on air" title isn't right, though, since CO₂ is only around 1% of the content of air. StuRat 10:24, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now, how porous are these extremely low-density aerogels? If you immerse them in (for example) carbon dioxide, won't all the pores fill in with CO₂, increasing the net density of your block of aerogel? (Of course, with a large slab this process might take a while—moving a block of aerogel from air to something like argon, the block would float for a while until enough air was replaced by the heavier gas.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:54, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article says that aerogels are extremely good conductive insulators because they don't allow circulation so the pores shouldn't be able fill with CO2 (must consist of sealed cells). Rmhermen 04:28, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yea, I'm picturing closed cells, like Styrofoam. Is that considered an aerogel ? StuRat 06:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CSS - making background images partially transparent

I want to make the background image of a div partially transparent with the opacity: thingy. The problem is that when I apply this to the div, it makes the bloody text transparent, while the background image is as opaque as ever. Is there a way to get around this? Johnleemk | Talk 13:15, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Use a PNG image with alpha channel, so it's semi-transparent. This would be even more compatible than the opacity option in CSS, which is out of the current standards. ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 03:19, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IE doesn't support alpha channel PNGs, and the only way I know to get around this is to *sigh* go back to CSS. Johnleemk | Talk 04:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'd just say "Too bad for IE users". Most browsers DO support PNG transparency and will show it up right, but only IE will fail on this. Alternatively, your opacity property won't be supported by most of other browsers, so it's really all IE's fault. But there are IE fixes that make PNG transparency work, not sure if the full 8 bit alpha channel though.

On a side note, if you make it two divs, one for the background and the other one (inside the last) just for the text, and use the opacity + png transparency method on the bg one, it should work in most cases. ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 05:54, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Physiology

Why does a bag of intravenous 0.9% normal saline have a pH of 5.0?

Is it? Where did you get the information? See pH and Acidity. I can't help if you want to know which ions are involved. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:10, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What? The article Normal saline indicates it only contains salt, so it should be neutral. The physiological pH range for blood plasma is about 7.35-7.45. Injecting something with pH 5.0 into the bloodstream is insane. I don't believe that value. --BluePlatypus 20:50, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Salt doesn't necessarily imply a pH value of 7.0. If it's common salt, yes! deeptrivia (talk) 21:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Read the article. --BluePlatypus 21:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An aqueous solution with a pH of 5 is only very slightly acidic; ISTR that standing water can reach that value just by absorbing CO2 from the air, though I'm not sure about that. It represents one gram mole of a monobasic acid in 100,000 liters of water. I imagine the bloodstream has buffers that will easily swamp that out, so it's probably not an issue medically (but I'm not a biologist or medical doctor, so this info comes with no warranty). --Trovatore 21:05, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"slightly acidic" in chemistry terms, not in physiological terms. Acidosis occurs below pH 7.35 and you think pH 5.0 is safe? Hardly, try doing the math. pH is logarithmic. Assuming no buffers (which is wrong, but still) with 7 liters of blood at pH 7.35, 0.1 liters of pH 5 solution will bring that down to pH 6.7. And then you're dead. --BluePlatypus 21:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're missing the point. If your blood reaches a pH of 5, you're in trouble, no doubt. What I'm saying is, the introduction of an unbuffered aqueous solution having that pH into the blood will probably have very little effect on blood pH, because blood is, I assume, buffered. (Using more weasel words than usual because it's not my field and I certainly wouldn't want anyone to rely on these speculations.) --Trovatore 21:27, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

True, blood has a pH 7.35-7.45. But a bag of intravenous saline has a pH of 5.0, as indicated on the bag itself. One explanation I can suggest is Stewart's physicochemical principle, and that the strong ions (sodium and chloride) cause dissociation of water, increasing the free hydrogen concentration, and thus lowering pH (since pH is the log of the H+ concentration). Injecitng into blood will cause a slight acidosis as the strong ion difference is reduced (due to the equal sodium and chloride concentrations) - but the body will compensate for this. Patients injected with saline do not become acidotic, unless the mechanism is interfered with (i.e. regular saline infusions over days and days).

This is my theory - I have not come across literature to explain this. --80.42.73.89 21:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But that doesn't seem to fit common sense to me. I could perhaps accept the fact that the blood may be able to buffer the thing. But why not provide a drip at blood pH to begin with? It seems like a completely unnecessary stress on the body, which is the last thing someone with an IV drip needs. --BluePlatypus 23:06, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are more 'physiological' pH solutions, such as Hartmans (6.5), colloids such as gelofusine etc - it depends on the application. Even stored blood becomes acidic! Acid/Base in the body is still very much a work-in-progress, I think medicine/science has yet to understand even a tenth of the subject. To have a solution with a blood, or rather, extracellular pH would be hard to make as all individuals are different, and all the things that give us a 'pH' - ions, carbon dioxide, undetermined acids/bases etc, for all the different clinical situations that are encountered, would be impossible.

Problem with SVG format

When I upload Image:deeptrivia.svg, it comes out to be blank. But on Inkscape, it just appears fine. I have tried both plain svg and inkscape svg formats. Even when I redownload the uploaded image and open it on inkscape, it appears fine. The image should look like Image:deeptrivia.png. What is going wrong? deeptrivia (talk) 20:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Start with the obvious: Does your browser support SVG images? --BluePlatypus 20:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. It does. Could you see anything on clicking on Image:deeptrivia.svg ? deeptrivia (talk) 20:58, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

With Firefox 1.0.6, it doesnt show up. Have you considered simply uploading it in a different file format? GeeJo _{(t) (c)} • 21:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, Image:deeptrivia.png. But I'd like it to be scalable. deeptrivia (talk) 21:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see a white rectangle, which is also what Firefox shows when viewing the SVG file directly, and also what I see when I open the file in Inkscape. Are you sure you uploaded the correct version? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:24, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strange, because I again downloaded the file (saved with a different name of course) and opened it in Inkscape, and it again shows correctly! Could it be because I'm using a font to write in an ancient script, which would not be available on your computer? deeptrivia (talk) 21:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is almost certainly because you're using a font that Wikipedia's SVG renderer doesn't have, and for which it can't make a reasonable substitution. Note that whether your browser supports SVG is irrelevant; Wikipedia doesn't send your browser an SVG, it rasterises it into a PNG - and in order to rasterise text it has to have either the exact font you specify or a compatible fallback. The offending line in the SVG is "font-family:brahmi lipi rabison", and I think mediawiki doesn't have access to any of those fonts. There is a solution. You can't embed a font in an SVG, but you can convert the characters from a text object into a vector. Do that with path->object_to_path. Note that this means you'll be including the shapes of the glyphs themselves into the file you upload to wikipedia (rather than just a few chars of unicode text and a font name). You can only do that if the font you're using is licenced under a Wikipedia-compatible licence; as a derivative work, the SVG this process will produce will be licenced under that licence too. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:56, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a ton! That worked. I don't know what license the font has, but I downloaded it for free from the internet. deeptrivia (talk) 22:09, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Then you must assume it's not safe to use. —Keenan Pepper 22:17, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've emailed the creator of the font regarding the matter. deeptrivia (talk) 22:38, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sourceforge has a GPL Brahmi font at [22]. Whether GPL and GFDL are compatible licences is a matter above my paygrade. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:42, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally you image looks bad on a non-white background. That's because there's a big white rectangle stuck to it, near the bottom. Ungroup, delete the white rectangle, and save. It looks like you were trying to have a white background, but really that's not necessary, and Mediawiki's SVG renderer will correctly render the transparent SVG background to a transparent area of the resulting PNG. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I made that change. It seems the sourceforge fonts are for modern scripts based on the Brahmi script. deeptrivia (talk) 22:56, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

most enzymes are...

are most enzymes lipids, phospholipids, proteins, or carbohydrates?

Look at the first ~~sentence~~ five words of Enzyme. —Keenan Pepper 22:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

oh, sorry, i must have missed that, thanks. --Herzog 22:16, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting question. What I'd want to know is if most enzymes are proteins, which ones aren't? :) --BluePlatypus 23:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All enzymes are proteins by definition. There are non-protein catalysts, though, including some RNAs and metals (e.g. platinum). --David Iberri (talk) 23:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It was a rhetorical question. --BluePlatypus 23:21, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Danger in dissembling electronic devices?

I enjoy dissembling certain types of electronics, both just to see what the insides look like, and to try to learn more about how they work. I notice that on many devices it says something to the effect of "danger risk of electric shock if opened". I haven't been electrocuted by any of them yet, but I'm wondering if there is really any danger. If there is, how can I tell which parts(including wires) are safe to touch/disconnect and which ones aren't? Flea110 22:58, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Capacitors store electric charge, and they are dangerous to touch, as well as anything connected to them. I've got to say though: If you need to ask, then you probably shouldn't be doing it. Perhaps you should start with some simple home-electronics kits and books before you start cracking open unknown electronic devices. Once you open that thing there is nothing in there that indicates 'this part is dangerous'. Not only that, but parts which are supposed to be safe may not be. (I've gotten shocks from things that should have been grounded) So even knowledge isn't a catch-all. And whatever you do, don't open a TV, monitor or other form of CRT. Those things have enough juice stored in them when they're off to kill you. --BluePlatypus 23:15, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And especially don't open a defibrillator! hydnjo talk 23:20, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What sort of "simple home-electronics kits and books" do you mean? Can you give me some examples? Flea110 23:33, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This magazine website should give some indication of what hobby electronics constructors get up to. --Robert Merkel 00:29, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well there are all kinds of beginners and hobbyist books and magazines on electronics (See above, or just check your local bookstore, or an online one). As for kits, I've heard good things about Ramsey. They've got electronics kits for all kinds of stuff, including beginner ones which teach the basics. There are others too, just look in some hobbyist magazines or catalogs, or search online. --BluePlatypus 01:14, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dissembling electronic devices can be very dangerous. Some people think they swung the election to Bush in Ohio. Or they can just be annoying. Take my bathroom scale, the lying son of an adding machine.... --Trovatore 01:25, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It might be obvious to most, but just in case...

Always unplug any electronic device and remove any batteries before working on it.

Let it sit for a long time to ensure most capacitors will have discharged. StuRat 06:37, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

January 22

Attention Deficit Disorder?

I am a sophmore in college. I can't remember when the last time was that I concentrated on school work, while completely sober, for more than two hours at once. Most of my major papers and tests are handled with the aid of amphetamines (which I only use approximately once a month). However, I can concentrate on things that I am enjoying for extended periods of time. For example, I did exceptionally well in high school debate and I can read a good book for a few hours. Is there a chance that I have ADD? What can I do that might help me to concentrate on school work? Thanks for the help!

See a doctor. We unfortunately are not in a position to provide diagnoses. enochlau (talk) 00:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually a psychiatrist would be better for that kind of diagnosis. But you can check out the article on ADHD, or see the ASRS symptom checklist. (Note that the checklist results do not constitute a diagnosis.) But from what you've said here, I don't think it sounds like you've got it, though. In my experience ADHD is far more extreme, where you'd either be unable to concentrate for more than ten minutes, or you'd be 'hyperconcentrating' and completely lost for hours on end. Not being able to concentrate on things you find boring is normal, what really defines ADHD (in my subjective, non-expert opinion) is that those with it cannot concentrate on the things they do find interesting. --BluePlatypus 00:55, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the United States at least, a psychiatrist is a doctor, although the converse of course is not necessarily true. — Knowledge Seeker দ 01:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Two hours isn't bad at all. Just take a break every two hours, then get back into it. If that doesn't work, try spreading the studying and work over several days, and alternate subects to keep from getting bored to death. StuRat 06:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Need Help Identifying Plants

I'm no botanist, just a photographer. I request help in identifying the four pictures I have uploaded to the commons, which can be found on my Photography Page. Please feel free to label, categorize, or use any of these images if you can help me. Thanks in advanced. M@$+@ Ju ~ ♠ 01:10, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

lasers

Hello, Would you tell me what type of portable laser could be used to cut through ice but not harm people and not be effected by metal. I'm looking for type and power level. I suppose solid state and a moderate power level would work. I'm picturing like a saw with the beam going between 2 points andcutting the ice as it moves through it. Thanks. Scott

I would be afraid that ice would reflect or refract enough laser light to cause eye damage. StuRat 06:16, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seems a tricky and exceedingly complex and expensive way to cut through ice. You'd probably get excellent results with a thin wire extended between two points. Just get this wire constantly hot and it'll do the job very well. My best idea would be getting a wire of a material with great electrical resistance and letting a current go through it, but if you're willing to try that, you'd better be extremely cautious to not cause a short circuit, not get yourself electrocuted and just really understand that electricity can kill you. :P ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 03:25, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tail Spin - More information?

Not sure if I have the terminology correct--tail spin--but where can I find more information about it? My understanding is that when a jet-based aircraft stays at the same horizontal position and spins about the vertical axis towards the ground, it's referred to as a tail spin. Last I heard, there was no direct known cause, and there were mysteries surrounding recovery from such a situation. Where can I find more information about it? --24.231.16.6 03:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you can start with spin (flight). --Anon, 03:45, January 22.

Very cool; thanks, I just got my terminology mixed up. --24.231.16.6 05:49, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The term is also used for any "steady downward spiral", such as the collapse of Enron. StuRat 06:09, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Web Page Color

This page's background color is blue in Internet Explorer but black in Firefox. Why? Gerard Foley 04:30, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, while people are there, any comments (good or bad) about the design of the page and how to improve it? Thanks, Gerard Foley 04:39, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Near the top of the HTML code you have: bgcolor= "pics/sky blue bg". You should use just the number code or the name (bgcolor="blue") of the color you want. --jh51681 05:35, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I saw that line, but how does it work? Gerard Foley 05:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't use bgcolor, use style="background: blue url(path/filename.ext)" ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 05:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just don't understand what bgcolor= "pics/sky blue bg" does. Gerard Foley 06:32, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

schizosaccharomyces pombe

Hello, I am just an average guy who enjoys home distilling as a hobby. I have done a little research about yeast strains, a little mind you. I was wondering where I could purchase a strain of schizosaccharomyces pombe yeast. If you know of any sites that I could make such a purchase I would be most appreciative. Thank you for your time and effort in advance. Patrick Kelty.

My first Google hit. Avoid the mutant strains if you want to brew. --JWSchmidt 05:32, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Refutations of Arguments Against the Multiverse Hypothesis

I am going to give some counter-arguments refuting the arguments many people have made against the theory of Parallel Universes:

First, I've heard that the theory of Parallel Universes isn't very scientific.But just because a particular belief,idea or guess isn't scientific doesn't mean it's not true, or it can't be true.Look at all those religions and religious beliefs in the world.Those beliefs which many of the religions in the world are based on or teach aren't very scientific, but that doesn't mean that they're not true!! I've heard some creationists say that the theory of Parallel Universes can not explain why the Universe has the conditions,physical laws and physical constants needed for life to exist, because there's no evidence to prove it.Actually, things are the other way round.The fact is, there is evidence to prove it is true because it explains very well why the Universes has the fine-tune conditions needed for life exist.After all, people have also said the theory of intelligent design is not true because of that sort of stuff.

There's a name for that theory, but I can't quite say it... "Of course the universe is the way it is, if it was any other way we wouldn't be here to see it". Tzarius

I wouldn't call it a theory, it's quite obvious that if the universe couldn't support life then we wouldn't be here to see it. Therefore, any universe we can observe must be capable of supporting life. I suppose you could call this a biased sample. Since we can only sample universes capable of sustaining life, we get a very biased view of what the typical universe looks like. StuRat 07:06, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Second, I've that the Multiverse hypothesis is not true because some scientists say that it's inevitable that the Universe turned out the way it is.Are they saying they know the reason why the Universe is the way it is, with all those physical laws,rules,principles and constants?First, isn't that pretty arrogant?Second, what is reason they know that the Universe is the way it is?If they don't know why the Universe has the laws and physical constants that it has, then they shouldn't make such an arrogant claim!!

Doesn't matter what theory you're talking about. You can argue everything down to the basic "But why?" and the scientific method cannot provide the answer. Tzarius

Also note that religion comes down to unanswereable questions, too. Where did God come from ? Why does he care about us insignificant mortals ? Etc. StuRat 07:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Third, I've heard that the exist of many universes raises the question of whether virtual worlds generated by conputers and virtual reality should be counted among them.The existence of other universes means the existence of places and areas of space that you cannot reach no matter how far travel across the Universes.So the virtual worlds contains virtual objects, and are generated by computer or VR, are virtual or 'imaginary' Parallel Universes.

Sure. There could well be an infinite number of other universes, unreachable by any means from this one. But since they can't possibly affect this universe, they can be safely ignored. Tzarius

Fourth, I've heard that the Multiverse hypothesis violates Occam's Razor.By making such a theory, you then have to explain why different universes have different physical laws and constants.First, the Multiverse hypothesis is the simplest explanation!Intelligent design is far more complicated.Second, many theories have parts of them which unexplained when they were first made.For example, Newton's theory of gravity didn't explain why gravity exists.And even when the general theory of relativity explained it as a distortion of space time, that didn't explain why matter distorts spacetime.And when Darwin's theory of evoltuion was made, it at first didn't explain why different animals have differentlevels of survival ability in the first place or how living things originated in the first place.Third, as to what other universes might be like, that's very interesting.Who knows?One of them might even be like the world of Narnia in the story, the Chronicles of Narnia. Please tell the people who have been arguing against the multiverse hypothesis about my refutations or counter-arguments!!!!

By your own admission, the parallel universes theory "isn't very scientific". If it cannot be proven or disproven, then it does not belong in Science, and will remain on the fringes of fancy. Tzarius 06:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

inductor

want 2 know about the properties of the inductor

Perhaps you didn't realize this, but this is actually an encyclopedia where you can answer most questions yourself using the handy search bar along the left side of your screen. Type in "inductor", press "Go", and marvel at the wonder that is modern technology. --David Iberri (talk) 07:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]