Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2007 June 13

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June 13

Transpiration rates for pineapple and oak

...The water loss per square centimeter of each leaf in one hour (t/c2) will be the standard for the measurement. The transpiration rate for both leaves (pineapple and oak) will be taken from a one-centimeter-wide square cut from each leaf...

I don't have the time, resources, or inclination to find this out myself. Does anybody have a clue as to the quantitative value of the water loss per square centimeter for oak and pineapple? If you don't have it for oak and pineapple, I just want a temperate/polar plant and a tropical/humid-area plant. The one who answers my query will receive something nice in return.~ Flameviper 00:39, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Flameviper, welcome back. I noticed you just got provisionally released from an indefblock, contingent upon good behaviour. You wouldn't happen to be trolling us with these complex questions, would you? My apologies for being a bit suspicious. Anchoress 00:45, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying to complete a term paper. This would be relatively easy, since the assignment is to make a lab report. However, I never performed the experiment, so I'm forced to make up data at the last minute.

So I'm doomed.

DOOMED.

~ Flameviper 00:50, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree. You're doomed. -- JSBillings 00:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I R SNOUTY ANTELOPE
sorry bout th doom

I had a feeling it might be something like that, hence my "do your own homework" above. Sorry, you're doomed. Have a snouty antelope, it might make you feel better. --YFB ¿ 01:47, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

If you have a paper due "very soon" and are missing some important info but "don't have the inclination to find [it] out", then why should anyone else have any inclination to help you find it out? DMacks 02:13, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

What is disappointing about this incident is that the internet (and Wikipedia) make it easier than ever before in human history to get the information you need. If you are still having trouble writing a simple lab report, it is most likely for lack of effort. The reference desk can help you with details, but we will not do homework for you. Nimur 06:04, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

You could always try substituting mathematical functions for data. Eldereft 08:31, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Honestly you'd be in better shape if you just contacted your teaching fellow or teacher or whatever and explained that you screwed up, see if you can do some sort of alternate assignment. If you fake your data and you get caught then all sorts of academic hell can come down on you and it is never, never worth that risk for one lousy assignment. If you wrote an essay about how you would do the assignment and what kinds of results might come up and what sorts of things that might imply you'd probably get a C out of pity, which ain't so bad. Students who plagiarize or fake data are really asking for trouble, since the person you are giving the data/work to is probably an expert in the subject (or more so than you!) and has a much higher chance of spotting something fishy than you probably expect. Don't get a major blemish on your transcript because of one stupid lab you missed — not worth it. --24.147.86.187 13:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Energy is an adverb; Force is a noun, the real nature of energy - what is it?

Energy, what is it? This is a truely fundamental question. In my 55 years on this planet, I have yet to receive a satisfactory explanation (definition) of "energy" or "force" in it's true form; all answers being elaborate descriptions of the consequences of energy acting upon another "thing" or condition. Therefore, I have to assume that "Energy" is not a thing (in itself) but is an action. Electrical energy is not the electrons in the wire - it is the consequence of the movement of these electrons in a uniform manner, relative to all the surrounding electrons that don't move and what "effect" is manifested as a result of this movement. Energy is an adverb; an observation on an event. The humble masses, of whom I am a typical example, do not possess graduate degrees in physics yet even the most obdurate intelligence can distinguish between the cause of an event and the effect. I am appealing to the global community for an explanation of energy that does not depend upon an allegory or metaphore repleat with elegant mathematics designed to quantify the value of how many Newtons per cubic centermetre per second squared, etc. The concept of energy comes before the mathematics necessary to quantify it; why is it impossible to find a clear explanation of this fundamental concept free of the sidetracks that draw the attention away from the actual nature of the thing into the complexities of it's behaviour? If energy, as a concept, is actually a process or dynamic event - why do we call it a noun? Surely it is an adverb. If it is explained as an adverb - the naive tendency of the human mind to be confused with the plethora of different manifestations of energy would be relieved; they would become different descriptions of "events" not "energy - the noun".

This would help (in my humble opinion) to make a precise distinction between the adverb - "energy" and the noun - "force". I could ascribe the fundamental nature of force to "force" and the manner in which it manifests to "energy". I could safely assume that matters of "momentum" and "gravity" were closely related to a similar force as is "heat" and "electromagnetic radiation". I could ponder the elliptical path taken by a molecule of water as it's location is traversed by the coming and going of a wave (of force). I could imagine the nature of a "photon" as being a quantity of force, bound into the form of potential energy, imposing that force on the "body" of an electron and thus 'forcing' it down into a tighter, closer shell within the atom, only to 'quiver' for a time before 'releasing' or re-binding that extra force into another 'photon' or potential energy and returning to it's original shell.

At this point, my psyche is crushed down with the weight of a thousand exhasperated sighs - as the world of science despairs at my ignorance. Alas, but true. I must believe that "force" is a 'thing' that manifests as 'energy' - which is an event defined by frequency and/or temperature - thus exhibiting a specific range of effects relevent to these conditions.

The underlying nature of force, should be fundamental and not dependent upon the characteristics of the outward show it puts on. Understanding the inherent similarities between heat (as in infra-red radiation) and light (as in a light-globe) seems easy - the same force is manifesting at a different frequency. But science (dare I say it) neglects to explain the "force" that gives rise to the event called electromagnetic radiation. Science does continue to seek the "Unified field Theory" that aims to encapsulate all forms of "energy" (the adverb) into one single law. I can only presume that this 'discovery' will enable physicists to claim at last - a force; a thing; an actual entity.

Despite the advances we have made as a species, many of us have barely made it out of the trees and we are struggling with the modern world you have provided for us. For millenia, I have believed that it was the wave itself that pushed me to the shore, now I have to believe it is a force passing through the water. Please, please help me to accomodate this subtle difference?

General Perception 00:44, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm curious. How can force be a noun? Ohanian 00:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you can't figure it out, may the force be with you. :D Anchoress 00:51, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

What about " Energy is an adverb; an observation on an event. "? None of my science teacher has ever taught me that! Ohanian 00:55, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I looked through my Star Wars Dictionary, the Harry Potter Lexicon, and my list of the Seven Klingon Words You Can't Say on TV, and no answers were forthcoming, so I'm completely out of ideas here. Anchoress 00:58, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I must believe that "force" is a 'thing' that manifests as 'energy' - which is an event defined by frequency and/or temperature - thus exhibiting a specific range of effects relevent to these conditions.

Can someone explain to me how a noun can manifest itself as an adverb? I'm so confused. Ohanian 00:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

It can't. The statement that "energy is an adverb" is not correct. The adverbs from "force" and "energy" are "forcefully" and "energetically". -- JackofOz 01:03, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Energy is the potential an object has to do work. Which is exactly what the page on Energy states in the first sentence. Note that "work" in this case has a specific application in science, the specific force necessary to do something physical. A good example is Potential energy.

Now, if you want to claim that the terms are nebulous and circular in definition, you'll want to talk to Linguists and Philosophers, because that's outside the perview of science. They have very specific meanings in science, which refer to mathematical concepts. Debating their nature is like debating the nature of Addition: what is addition? A mathematical construct, nothing more. Likewise, "energy" is a mathematical construct used by science to denote a specific measurement observed in nature. -- Kesh 01:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I apologise, my English is no better than my science. I was trying to use the distinction between a noun and a verb to illustrate the difficulty I was having distinguishing between the "force" and the actions that come from applying that force. It is a physics question, just badly constructed.

Using the terms you have introduced into this page; if a force is applied to an object; it will do "work" in moving that object to another place. Thus the force (the thing that I am trying to understand in its fundamental nature) performed an action that manifested what was originally "potential energy" into the form of "kinetic energy" to "move" the object (or to perform the work of moving the object) from one place to another.

I hope this example works better. The "force" was originally in the form of "potential energy" and then manifested as "kinetic energy" by doing "work". This is why I am relating the term "energy" to the behaviour or state of the force. It is not the force itself, simply the state in which the force is manifest.

This may sound like a schoolboy question as indeed it probably is; however, Kesh is right in stating that science has a specific meaning when using these terms and I, in my ignorance, am trying to unravel the meaning of these terms to get at the fundamental nature of what that thing is that can exist at one moment as "potential" and then act or (work) as kinetic energy in the next moment. General Perception 01:38, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Conservation of Energy has a nice historical overview of how the terminology developed accurately and consistently came to describe the phenomena. --Eldereft 08:42, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure that the concept of energy comes before the mathematics necessary to quantify it. In Chapter 4 of the first volume of The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman says (and he, more than most, should know):

It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount. It is not that way. However, there are formulas for calculating some numerical quantity, and when we add it all together it gives ... always the same number. It is an abstract thing in that it does not tell us the mechanism or the reasons for the various formulas.

Energy is a really awkward thing to pin down, because in some cases it's very difficult to say exactly where it is, and sometimes there are alternative, equally good descriptions for a given physical situation which locate the energy in entirely different places. This is particularly true in electromagnetism. But when you use the formulas to add it all up, it always comes out to be conserved. It's the way the maths works, and nature seems to follow the maths. So sorry, you just have to learn the maths!

Force is what causes acceleration of mass. Beyond that, who knows? Energy is force times the distance through which it operates. That's all there is. That's as fundamental as you can hope to get. The laws of physics lead to a very profound principle, the conservation of energy, and that's why energy is such a useful concept to the physicist. To the layman, it may very well be fairly useless, or at least non-productive. Certainly, many lay uses of the word have no relation at all to the physics meaning.

Kesh is right - you can only sensibly and consistently talk about force and energy in mathematical terms. Any other usage suffers at the whims of the definitions and nuances that the speaker wishes to apply to them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying that it is the wave that is pushing you. But if you want to put a number on how hard it is pushing, well, that involves maths, and a rigorously defined set of concepts. --Prophys 11:15, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

For a simple human explanation - in human terms Energy is WORK - if you have ever truly worked you will know what it is like to expend energy. Good luck87.102.89.96 20:41, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

MANY THANKS to Prophys,

This was the conundrum that I was struggling with - that we do not understand the underlying nature of WHAT force or energy is in itself and we are forced (pardon the pun) to move beyond this point into calculations of quantity, quality and interaction. Mankind did not understand how anaesthetics worked for the first decade of their use and physics is littered with the successful exploitation of 'forces' through the use of theories that were subsequently dropped. However, this did not stop us from exploiting these opportunities and (through observation) learning how much to use or apply. I was not attempting to avoid the mathematics, merely setting it aside for a moment so as to focus on the nature of the thing itself without straying into the more familiar world of measurement and observation.

What bothers me is bound up in your comments, "Beyond that, who knows?" and "That's all there is." As Kesh said; we can only talk sensibly and consistently about energy in mathematical terms; just as early medical professionals could only talk about patient weight, dosage levels and the resultant periods of unconsciousness when discussing the effects of anaesthetics. Herein lies the problem. On the one hand, doctors knew how to apply anaesthetics to get the desired results without knowing (at that time) how they worked until such time as the answers were known. Physics helps us to exploit an ever greater range in both quantity and quality of force but with a far less optimistic view of ever understanding what is actually doing the work. Surely, we are not expected to accept that the nature of force will never be understood. And it is in this light that I was seeking an observation from the wikiworld of how much we, as a species, understand the true nature of force.

I appreciate that, after the ubiquitous taunts from the student body, a kind soul addressed my question seriously. I also appreciate that most readers would naturally assume that my intent was to achieve some mastery over the subject for the purposes of exploitation; however, my question was aimed at the current state of pure research existant at this time. I assume that the general thrust towards a Unified Theory that combines the four natural forces into one is bound up with this very question and I was keen to try and understand the current wisdom on the subject. For now, I am satisfied to know that this answer still eludes us. 202.14.81.49 22:48, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Function of resin in plants

I just read the article on resin after watching a NOVA special on amber. The article describes the chemical makeup of resin and some of the uses humans have for it. What isn't clear to me is: why do plants secrete resin in the first place? What purpose does it serve the plant? --Wyckyd Sceptre 00:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

There are a variety of theories as to why plants secrete resins - they may be protective against insect or fungal attacks, or a response to general physical damage, or an aid in attracting pollinating insects, or.... -- MarcoTolo 03:03, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

colas effect on bacteria

I would like to know, if anybody knows, if coca cole and or diet coke eats bacteria...I have researched every search engine I know of and nothing comes up. Although there was all kinds of history on the products, there was never anything useful to help answer my question. I know that coke will eat through a penny and it will eat through meat, but will it eat bacteria or even a virus? Anything on this subject would be helpful. Thankyou 65.90.54.194 01:16, 13 June 2007 (UTC) curios about coke in Utah

Bacteria and Viruses are fairly large groups of organisms, so the answer is yes for some and no for others. Just as air is a bad environment for some bacteria, cola is probably a bad environment for some bacteria. But many other bacteria and viruses are incredibly hardy. The primary difficulty, I think, for bacteria or viruses to live in cola would be the high acidity. But there certainly are many which can survive and thrive in an acid environment. Some strains of yeast (a type of bacteria) have been shown to grow specifically in cola [1].

On a related note, a bit of googling finds an article on a misconception in Malaysia about cola preventing the spread of HIV, the virus which causes AIDS (even an effective disinfectant would be ineffective here, not because of the resiliance of the viron, but because the infection is in the patient's blood and bodliy fluids, not on their skin).

I doubt cola would make a good disinfectant, since it would (a) not kill many bacteria or viruses , and (b) would leave a film of sugar which would be a good medium for further microbial growth.

Is your question related to anthing in particular or just general curiousity? --TeaDrinker 01:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

You'll be interested in our article on extremophiles; the acid-tolerant ones are acidophiles. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:50, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

And don't forget osmophile. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 05:14, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

For reference, cola has about 11 g/dL of sugar, and an osmolality of about 430 mOsm/kg. - Nunh-huh 05:21, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

What about the bugs that can survive in Cyanoacrylate (super glue)? Anyone know what they're called? Medical-grade super-glue has to be sterilized to ensure that there's nothing floating around in it that shouldn't be... --Kurt Shaped Box 13:11, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeast is a fungus, not a bacterium. Icek 13:04, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

In regards to why I asked the question.....I recently became very ill with Tonsillitis. When I would drink Cola, it seemed to temporarily relieve me of the white spots on my tonsils. I wondered if it was the cola. If so, it would make a great experiment. You have been very helpful to me. Thank you.65.90.54.194 15:26, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Parts of a Cell

In simple, 7th grade science terms, what do a cytoplasm and mitochondria do? --(Review Me) R ^ParlateContribs_@(Let's Go Yankees!) 02:26, 13 June 2007 (UTC) who is cramming for his final.

Click the links that are now in your question. Both articles are seventh grade level. At least in the introduction. Sifaka ^talk 02:35, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I already looked at those. Those don't seem 7th grade to me, and if they are, I'm in an accelerated class that does 7th and 8th grade in one year, and we spent most of the year on 8th grade science, and we didn't get into life science that much. Like I said, a simple one sentence thing. --(Review Me) R ^ParlateContribs_@(Let's Go Yankees!) 02:41, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, in a eukaryotic cell (i.e. animal, plant, and fungal cells - but not bacterial), cytoplasm is the fluid inside a cell which surrounds the organelles. Mitochondria can be thought of as the primary energy-generating organelle inside a cell. -- MarcoTolo 02:57, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Er, cytoplasm is everything in the cell that's not in the nucleus (the nucleus is the region of a cell that contains DNA, and is encased in a membrane that is much like the membrane that surrounds the cell itself). Someguy1221 03:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Loosely speaking, "cyto" means "cell" and "plasm" means "fluid." So, cytoplasm is the juice inside the cell. Most biology definitions also include the stuff floating in the fluid (cell components called organelles). Each organelle performs a task. One type is called a mitochondria, and it is responsible for chemical reactions that release energy for the cell to use. Is this 7th grade level? Nimur 06:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Ironically, when I was in 7th grade biology, I found it infuriating that people would use such unscientific word-choice as "cell juice." As if changing the word-choice makes the concept any easier to understand... if anything, it makes it more difficult to understand by using imprecise language. Nimur 06:10, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

My seventh grade biology teacher taught me that mitochondria are power plants. I guess that's a good way of looking at it. Someguy1221 06:41, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Where the distinction is important, cell biologists will often use cytoplasm to mean essentially everything but the cell nucleus, and cytosol to include just the gooey liquid that the organelles are floating in. It gets confusing because some people (and many textbooks, and even parts of Wikipedia) use the term cytoplasm interchangeably with, and to mean, cytosol. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:52, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

AS level Biology in the UK uses cytoplasm exclusively to mean the liquid. Might there be regional differences? Skittle 19:15, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I was taught the "gooey fluid" description of cytoplasm in about 1965 in ninth-grade biology. It represents the best approximation known at that time. From today's perspective, it is worse than a gross oversimplification, its just wrong. It's not an unstructured liquid or gel. Instead, it's highly structured, primarily by a complex network of microtubles to which all of of the other organelles are attached. The mental model of a cell as a bag of fluid with things floating in it is just wrong. organelles and complex molecules do not diffuse through a fluid. Instead, they are actively moved along the microtubules by complex chemical interactions similar to those that cause muscles to contract. -Arch dude 22:44, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Interesting animation here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H1S9d5h-Ps a gross oversimplification (too dilute) but the motor proteins moving vesicles along microtubules is kind of cool and there is a beautiful example of dynamic instability. Also a cool shot of mRNA shooting out of the nuclear pores. And much more. David D. (Talk) 04:49, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Does contact dermatitis always itch?

When I started Lamictal two years ago, and again last year when the dosage was increased, I developed minor rashes. Each time a primary care physician blamed it on poison ivy and diagnosed contact dermatitis. However, rashes are among the side effects of Lamictal. A serious rash is associated with Stevens-Johnson syndrome, which has an incidence of about one in a thousand, but about 10% of patients develop a harmless rash. Since there was never any itching, I figured the PCPs were mistaken. The first two times I was given a prescription cream, but the last time (after I had learned what I stated above) I did nothing and the rash went away in a few days.

A few days ago, this time without any change in the Lamictal level, I developed the rash again. Again a PCP diagnosed contact dermatitis and called it a "classic" case.

So, can contact dermatitis, commonly caused by such substances as the oil in poison ivy or poison oak, occur and yet not itch at all? --Halcatalyst 04:34, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

When I get contact dermatitis, typically from wool allergy or wet rubber gloves, it never itches. But I don't know about poison ivy or poison oak. Anchoress 05:51, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

It may be that the source of my c.d. may be something other than poison ivy. It's just that the docs (several differnt ones) were so insistent it was that. Jermone Groopman in his recent book How Doctors Think identifies one of the bad habits of clinicians as jumping to conclusions based on what they see frequently -- like poison ivy cases in the summer. --Halcatalyst 12:41, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried the recommended techniques of asking "what else could it be?" and "is there anything that doesn't fit that diagnosis?". Indeed, have you mentioned to them that it doesn't itch, and asked if that fits? Skittle 19:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

That's profesional bias :( Go to a doctor that has only just started, they should be more careful :) HS7 18:35, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

You could try a dermatoligist perhaps? Nil Einne 19:55, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Rainfall Volume

Hi,
I was just wondering does anyone have a rough figure of the amount of rain that falls on Australia each year (in litres)? Thanks, --124.181.114.58 10:11, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

The Bureau of Meteorology has a website with lots of information. Here you can get various maps of average rainfall, and in here is a statement that the long-term annual average rainfall over all Australia is 472 mm. Now all you have to do is look up the area of Australia, multiply depth by area, and get the units right! --Prophys 11:50, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

3,653,855,840,000,000 litres, or about 3600 cubic kilometers or 3.6 petaliters. GB 07:02, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I wonder about the accuracy of that "average" rainfall for the purposes of computing total water volume. Is the average rainfall calculated from an equally-spaced grid of local measurements? Or is it simply the average of several specific locations where data was collected? If there is no normalization by area, it will be impossible to accurately multiply "average rainfall depth" by "total area" to obtain "total volume." You should investigate the averaging technique more thoroughly if the accuracy of the result is very important. Nimur 20:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

True, the distribution of rainfall recording stations is extremely non-uniform, but those clever blokes at the Met Bureau know a bit of mathematics, and have fitted the observations with a 3-D spline function on a roughly 2.5 km grid, from which they generate the rainfall maps. Should be good enough for a rough figure, hey? --Prophys 09:44, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Glad to see they put in the requisite effort! Nimur 10:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Leg disease in gulls

I saw a gull yesterday with a badly-swollen leg. The left leg was about three times as thick as the right and the foot was swollen, twisted and discoloured. Assuming that this wasn't a birth defect or a badly healed break - what type of disease might cause something like that? --Kurt Shaped Box 13:32, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

elephantiasis?

Maybe a broken bone and accompanying infection? bibliomaniac15 Join or die! 17:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I dislike questions where there is a shining, clear, obvious answer and the questioner says "Assuming that (the shining, clear, obvious answer) is false, what is the answer?" - We've been getting a lot of these recently and it's really pointless to try to answer them. In this case, it's really clear that it's a badly healed broken bone.

So what is 2+2 - assuming it isn't 4? SteveBaker 19:09, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

2+2=1. Assuming a modulo of 3... --Five Miles Out^SQUAWK 20:22, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I watch the gulls a lot. I've seen many gulls with mangled and deformed legs. I've never seen anything like that before. There was so much swelling to the foot that the toes were being forced apart and to the sides. The leg itself was straight, albeit badly swollen and the bird seemed to be able to put its weight on it evenly, which is not usually the case with a break. --Kurt Shaped Box 19:18, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm no veterinarian, but it sounds a lot more like an injury than a disease to me. Friday (talk) 19:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Depending on location, and most importantly on if it looks as if the animal is suffering directly from this injury (pains, not eating well, etc) you may want to contact someone. A local hunter, or sheriff - anything of the sort within the boundaries of law and sensibility. 81.93.102.185 21:13, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Gulls can and do chew off legs that're causing them pain. They seem okay afterwards too - one-legged gulls using their wings to balance whilst hopping along are not an uncommon sight... --Kurt Shaped Box 21:54, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Seagull gout? Probably eats too much seafood. :) — Scientizzle 15:55, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

amarant

why doesn't wikipedia seem to have an article on this? What is it? Apart from the obvious, that it is a flower.It is, isn't it?

Because you didn't look for it :-) ? See amarant. The article says that it is a cosmopolitan genus of herbs -- WikiCheng | Talk 14:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I did look for it. It wasn't there before.

The redirect was created in 2004 and hasn't been edited since :-) I assume you made a typo when you looked earlier. Skittle 18:27, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Author abbreviation

Does anyone know the author abbreviation for Norman Tindale? Currently needs fixing at Gryllotalpa brachyptera and List of zoologists by author abbreviation. My googling was fruitless so far. --Brand спойт 15:13, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Looking through his journal publications he seems to almost always just be Norman B. Tindale. Someguy1221 15:22, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

According to our article on Author citation (zoology) the abbreviation will be "Tindale" unless there is already someone with that abbreviation. If there is, then his abbreviation will be "N. Tindale", I think. -Arch dude 21:33, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Primate Cities

Hi there, this came across in a lesson and i have found out what they are, but am not sure about where they are, i have seen many examples of primate cities, but does anyone know where i can access a map to see the spatial distribution of these?

Thanks for your time Amrish

I couldn't find a map, but I can tell you that every country has at least one. For example, Japan's would be Tokyo, being both very large and reflective of national culture. Or New York City for the United States. A primate city doesn't have to be the capital city, but it's usually a country's largest city. bibliomaniac15 Join or die! 17:07, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

The wikipedia article for primate cities says the US doesn't actually have one, listing multiple major cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.). There's a list of cities there, but no map of them. -- Madeleine 17:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Isnt a primate city one that is more than twice as big as the second largest city in its country?

According to our article "A primate city is a major city that works as the financial, political, and population center of a country and is not rivaled in any of these aspects by any other city in that country. Normally, a primate city must be at least twice as populous as the second largest city in the country." And by no means do all countries have one. Skittle 19:05, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

So, nothing to do with monkeys, then? Darn. --LarryMac | Talk 19:30, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I was disappointed, too...I had an image of a chimp-inhabited metropolis, not unlike Bear City. — Scientizzle 16:38, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree. The Vatican City is a country that only has one city - which clearly can't be twice as populous as the second largest because there isn't one! So if you go by the 'twices as big' rule, you're in trouble. If you go by the 'not rivaled by any other city' rule - then undoubtedly you can't pick one for the USA because there is no way that New York rivals Washington DC as a political center and there is no way that Washington DC rivals New York in population. So there are most certainly many countries where there is no city that fits either of the two definitions. SteveBaker 19:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

You wouldn't want to use "primate" in a context in which its religious meaning would be confused with the one you intended, anyway... - Nunh-huh 20:05, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

In these cases, would it not be reasonable to assume that the capital is the primate city (along with providing sufficient notation on why this has been done)? Or can countries really have no primate city? --Five Miles Out^SQUAWK 20:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I would recommend reading the article Primate city, as it answers all your questions quite early on. Skittle 11:49, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I seem to have mixed up primate cities and another type of cities. I was up too late last night... --Five Miles Out^SQUAWK 16:33, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Medicine exams

Does anyone know where can I find (as many as possible) medicine exams? English, Spanish and Catalan are preferred as languages, though Portuguese, Italian and French would be acceptable too. Thanks. --Taraborn 21:02, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by "medicine exam"? Are you referring to the physical exams used by medical practitioners to investigate a patient's chief complaint? Medical sign may be of some use. Or are you referring to one of the many hoops health care workers must jump through to gain licensure? Perhaps you're looking for samples of the latter, in which case your best bet would be to search for test preparation companies that provide sample questions. Some clarification may help us better answer your question. Cheers, David Iberri (talk) 23:20, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I'm so sorry if my question was ambiguous, I actually didn't know how to say that with precision, so I just tried. I meant the tests medical students are given at universities and must be able to solve in order to get a degree. --Taraborn 14:45, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if there would be a central database with many different exams. In fact I doubt it. You'd probably have to do this the hard way and visit the websites of many universities (or their libraries) and see how you can get their exams (if it's possible). For example, the University of Auckland have their recent exam papers online, but they're not available to the public only students and staff [2]. Nil Einne 18:43, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Sapient computers

I know this is probably like an opinon question but maybe not if any research has been done that could provide and answer. Here it is: If people have to be smarter and know more than a computer to program it, i.e., not get error messages for everything they try, will the point at which only the computer can find the errorless solution be the point at which computers are more sapient than humans? I know its a dumb question but computers are beginning to make me feel really dumb. 71.100.14.114 22:35, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

It's not a stupid question. See Technological singularity. A fair number of smart people think it's inevitable withing the next 15 years. -Arch dude 22:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Uh... do you mean sentient? -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 22:58, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

No. I mean Sapient as in Homo Sapien. 71.100.14.114 00:03, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

From my on-line dictionary (Oxford American):

1. (formal) wise, or attempting to appear wise.
   • (chiefly in science fiction) intelligent: sapient life forms.
2. of or relating to the human species (Homo sapiens): our sapient ancestors of 40,000 years ago.

—Steve Summit (talk) 00:07, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Homo sapiens is the proper latin term. Anyway, the OP might be interested in reading Raymond Kurzweil's book, The Age of Intelligent Machines. -- JSBillings 00:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

From Windows Vista to HAL 9000 in 15 years? I wouldn't bet on it. Clarityfiend 01:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Computers have not really gotten much smarter since the 1970's - back then we had the UNIX operating system - and both Linux and MacOS are based around that exact same operating system. Windows isn't a great technological leap over either of those (many people feel it's a gigantic leap backwards) - so we've really made almost no progress since then in terms of intelligence in the core of practical computers. What we have seen is a radical improvement in speed and memory capacity and a huge reduction in size and cost. We've seen dramatic improvements in mass storage, graphics and audio...and the arrival of the mouse. Such advances as we have made (such as chess programs that stand a fair chance of beating grand-masters) have come from brute-force application of that hardware power - not from intelligent software. In any case, there are reasons to suppose that intelligent software wouldn't help much. An intelligent computer, when instructed to check your email might simply tell you that it's bored with doing that and prefers to spend it's time reading Wikipedia instead. Much of the benefits of computers over humans comes from their willingness to do the kinds of truly mindless repetitive jobs that intelligent beings hate to do. In any case, the problems most people have with computers relate to interfaces they have with them - not on whether the computer correctly carries out the task that's been set for them. Most software works just fine once you figure out how to tell it what you want it to do. Thirty seven years of development have added layers of graphical interface - but I find that the old-school 'type in a command' approach from the 1970's works better and more efficiently for most things. I'm a video game programmer and if you look over my shoulder most of the time - you'll see four windows sitting next to each other - covering most of the screen with ASCII text. SteveBaker 11:03, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

You mention "intelligent software" would a program like this qualify? 71.100.14.114 21:03, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

That feeble excuse for a paper is quite possibly the biggest pile of steaming bullshit that I've seen in many years! I don't even know where to begin ripping it's ridiculous claims to shreds...so I won't. It's crap...trust me. SteveBaker 00:45, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

What is the part about it that bothers you the most? 71.100.14.114 12:39, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Gaming is one area where intelligence matters and sadly the state of games e.g. RTSes says that AI is still at a very, very basic level. Nil Einne 18:38, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Yep - games do a reasonable job of trying to make other characters do things that seem intelligent - but they aren't generally using true AI techniques to do it. The hallmark of intelligence is flexibility in the face of unexpected events - computer AI characters don't do well at that. SteveBaker 00:45, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

How about MediaWiki? Is that "intelligent software" or something else? From one perspective, this is a software tool which is capable of returning virtually any type of information about virtually any subject. It is also easy to "program" (cf. Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit). This system has changed the paradigm for what we expect out of intelligent software - and how we anticipated it would be created. Nimur 21:18, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki is a simple database application - it looks amazingly good because of the 1.8 million articles that people have added - but in truth it's just some PHP script glued onto a standard database management system. We could easily have written the software back in the 1970's - but without enormous hard disks and the power of a ubiquitous world-wide network, it wouldn't have been very interesting. There is an ancient computer game that used to be called "Guess Animals" in which the computer asks you to think of an animal - then asks you questions to try to guess it. The program is insanely good at guessing your animal - often in an amazingly small number of questions. When it fails and guesses incorrectly, it prompts you to give it a question that it can use to distinguish between the animal it guessed and the animal you were actually thinking of. This is how it learns and gets better. After a few hundred people have played it for a while, it's pretty much impossible for it to fail. However, a reasonable programmer can easily write this program in an hour...it's very, very simple. But like Wikipedia, it gains it's KNOWLEDGE from human input. But there is an ocean of difference between knowledge and intelligence. You can play Guess Animals online here: http://www.rogerfrost.com/animaltree/index.htm - but the owner of that site (presumably worried about vandalism) has to manually vet the questions you might add - which means that his knowledge base doesn't grow very fast. SteveBaker 00:45, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

This sounds alot like the game 20 questions where they use a neural network to do the guessing of almost anything you can think of. 71.100.14.114 04:11, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I found Bruce Sterling's lecture "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole" (mp3 available from the long now foundation seminar series) a reasonable counterargument to the fears of technological singularity. He's got a sense of humor, too, it's funny and smart. -- Madeleine 08:39, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe this should be another question but how about inside the computer? By that I mean the programming of Avitars and the like. Could they ever develop to the point where they knew they existed and then proceeded on the basis that they could become even more capable than ugly "bags of water" (ref Star Trek episode 17)? 71.100.14.114 14:31, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I believe the main problem with developing artificial intelligence is that we don't even know for sure what intelligence is, so how can we possibly hope to replicate it. A dolphin obviously has more intelligence than a planarian, but no one can say for sure exactly what it is that the dolphin has that the planarian does not have.69.205.185.158 18:38, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

From the site linked to above intelligence capacity appears to be measured by the number of variables and states upon which a decision is based. Whereas superiority of intelligence relates to the order of significance. Hence people who base decisions on only one variable have less intelligence capacity (or perhaps greater intelligence efficiency) than people who include other variables. In all cases it is the order of significance of variables which determines superiority of intelligence meaning that superior intelligence can reside within a person of inferior capacity. Ugly bag of water 15:47, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Los Angeles in the year 2040

What would Los Angeles, California and other cities in North America be like in the year 2040?

I wanted to know because I watched Minority Report and Demolition Man a few years back.--Ericthebrainiac 22:53, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

See answer to the immediately preceeding question. If there is a Technological singularity within the next 15 years, then anything in 2040 is essentially unpredictable. -Arch dude 22:58, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

No one can know for sure, of course, but a reasonable qualitative guide can be had by reading science fiction from 33 years ago that speculates about 2007, to see what kinds of occasional things they got right and large number of things they got wrong. --TotoBaggins 01:04, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Everyone will be laughing at pictures of people back on '07, carrying around massive blocks of plastic with them for wireless communication. How quaint, they will say, I believe it was called an iPhone or something. Rockpocket 06:12, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

nice prediction rockpocket! I also believe there will be medications that are specifically for someone according to their DNA. and diets also....

Underwater? Gzuckier 18:22, 15 June 2007 (UTC)