Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2011 December 8

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December 8

Why would you tell yourself the obvious?

An example: you go to the basement for some reason you forgot the moment you got there and say literally and out loud to yourself: "why did I go here?". Why would you do that? Your brain obviously already knew it forgot the reason, and still it's somehow urged to take all the trouble to get the lungs, mouth and ears into action to get exactly that message. (I do hope I'm not the only showing this bizarre behaviour, otherwise consider saying "Ouch" or more blasfemous terms when there's nobody around). Possibly related is that when I encounter a hard problem when programming it often helps to get a collegae to explain the problem to and finding the cause by the explaining itself. Any clues for further reading? Joepnl (talk) 02:30, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I have never done anything of the like, but I know people who do. I know one who does it to the extreme. In my opinion, her brain is incapable of processing thoughts if she isn't speaking everything that she is thinking. So, I figure there is a certain level to which you find comfort in hearing your own voice. For me, I have no use for it. For the woman I mentioned, she is obviously uncomfortable if she isn't hearing her own voice (yes, she continues to talk to herself without pause even when she is alone in her office - new workers ask who she is talking to in there until they realize her mouth doesn't stop moving). I believe that most people are somewhere between the two extremes. All in all, it is a comforting thing. -- kainaw™ 02:34, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I asked a question that explicitly said that it's about talking to yourself without anyone hearing it so your rant about this person is totally useless. I do feel sorry for the woman you mentioned for knowing someone like you. Joepnl (talk) 03:15, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe intrapersonal communication would help you out. Dismas|^(talk) 03:01, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

That is interesting, thanks! Joepnl (talk) 03:17, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

After reading it, i'm a bit disappointed at the depth of the article but "intrapersonal communication" is the googable word i was looking for. Joepnl (talk) 03:28, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Thinking out loud solves problems faster. Kinda like doodling on paper when attempting to sort out your thoughts. This is a neotenous behavior. As children, we talked to ourselves a lot. We gradually lose this behavior as we mature, and it becomes internal dialogue (inner speech or egocentric speech, as opposed to social speech). We still revert to it in stressful situations though. Interestingly enough, the ages when children stop thinking out loud coincides with the ages in which children learn to lie.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 03:46, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

You could equally well ask why we don't do this sort of thing more often. Most of us spend a lot of our time talking silently to ourselves (see internal monologue) -- why do we do it silently rather than aloud? Looie496 (talk) 03:49, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

My mom used to say "People that talk to themselves aloud are either crazy or have money in the bank". Usually just after talking to herself aloud. --Jayron32 04:36, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I have always known "talking to yourself" as "external processing". Unfortunately, my google trials tonight are not coming up with much by way of references. What I recall is that individuals' "normal" processing mode is somewhere on a continuum from "always talking" to "never talking" about their thoughts. The latter are "internal processors". Most of us have a tendency one way or the other, but may change modes for specific circumstances. (I had a colleague like Kainaw's, but I am much less flexible; I had to keep my door shut whenever she was in her office. I also have a brother-in-law with some of the attributes, though he can be quiet.) Bielle (talk) 05:47, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Language is a useful tool for critical thinking. Broca's area#Functions says that various simple tasks (such as looking and grasping) activate speech-related brain areas. This doesn't mean that you have to verbalise out loud, but as several people posting above me have implied, holding the words in (and re-processing them internally, rather than letting them go through the full feedback loop, out the mouth and back in through the ears) might be a social nicety and an effort which makes life harder for the thinker.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:27, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

And concerning the 'ouch', exclaiming over something like this actually helps you deal with the pain, especially if you use reserved words for it. Swearing, for example, can be effective at reducing perceived pain, as well as at reducing stress and anger, but only if you don't usually use those words: swearing is only effective if you hardly ever do it, keeping the words taboo. Do we have detail in our article profanity? Apparently not. 86.164.79.174 (talk) 10:11, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Here's an apt example of what you're describing:[4] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:23, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I have some OR on the swearing relieving stress thing. Exactly a year ago just before Christmas I was experiencing severe pain in my jaw, and needed to go to a dentist. Sadly in most cases it is difficult to get help immediately, because of lines, so I was running between different dentists' offices holding my face in my hands. Anyway, winter was at its height, and it was quite cold and snowing, and in course of the running I slipped and fell. And I thought to myself - or I might have even said it out loud - this is too much, I can afford to swear now, I deserve it. I let out a short but satisfying combo of profanity, and it felt good (it felt a bit worse when I realised that a girl walking by had heard it, but I quickly returned to sweet-and-nice mode and politely asked her for the way to the next hospital). Anyway, that one moment, that really helped me relieve the anger at that point. Oh, and for the curious: I had to visit three more dentists' offices before I actually got any help. --Ouro (blah blah) 13:38, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe there's a related phenomenon where some people don't seem to be able to count without saying the numbers out loud. Apparently the speech center is irrevocably linked to the counting part of their brains. StuRat (talk) 18:04, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I find myself saying things aloud that have nothing to do with what I am actually thinking about. Common ones when thinking about math problems are "I need money" or random literary quotes. Of course, I can not do it if I really want, or if I'm in public -- it's just what happens when I let my body loose. It's not unusual for wiring to be crisscrossing as you're intensely firing the brain. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:13, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that auditory memory could be somehow involved - however easily one might hear words in his imagination, I think actually hearing them has a longer-lasting impact. The specific instance I'm thinking of are some of those puzzle video games where a person is supposed to assign various alien letters to specific positions or a specific order, which I was occasionally called to assist with. ;) My approach is to burn some time at the beginning assigning each alien letter a unique word based on some character it vaguely resembled. Then I would recite the correspondences or the part of the order I knew out loud, and use the audio recording in my mind as a storage medium. Without such tactics, relying on mute recognition of the symbols, I think I would have been hard pressed to solve the puzzles at all. Wnt (talk) 22:23, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Just for those that are interested, an article from Scientific American on Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief. I remember reading about that a while back. --jjron (talk) 06:32, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

And on a related note, I read recently that asking yourself a question about doing something that you are perhaps trying to avoid (say exercising, e.g., "Am I going to go for a bike ride today?") is more likely to result in you doing it than telling yourself that you have to do it (e.g., "I have to go for a bike ride today"). Unfortunately I can't find the ref at the moment, but the reasoning was something about your brain responding differently to the question than the demand. --jjron (talk) 06:53, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Proximity of modesto california to san andreas fault

Can anyone tell me how close 1445 Lone Palm Ave, Modesto, California, is to the San Andreas fault? Phil B. Hammond, <email removed> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.26.112.130 (talk) 04:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I have removed your email address. No one is going to email you, and publishing your email on a public website assures that you will get bombarded with spam. Modesto, California is in the Central Valley, while the San Andreas Fault runs much closer to the coast, through the Santa Cruz Mountains. It appears to be about 80-90 miles away. The major fault near Modesto is the San Joaquin Fault. --Jayron32 04:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Using this website and this Google Maps tool, I found that the distance to be 62 miles (100 km), probably with an error of ±2 miles (3.2 km) or so. I do not know how accurate the red line is in the website I linked to, but I have no reason to doubt it is off by more than a mile or two. -RunningOnBrains^(talk) 08:34, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Removing the e-mail but leaving the street address??? So is, that your blue pickup truck out front? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:17, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

This is, conceptually, more akin to a geological fault-line than any line on a map. Several reputable geological research institutions agree: [1] [2], [3]...

There's no good, precise answer to this - because the San Andreas fault doesn't occur at any one specific place. All the GIS software and precision assisted-GPS can't help you calculate the distance to a fuzzily-defined area.

The thing you have to understand is that there's no "line" that defines the fault. The entire region is what a geologist calls a "fault zone" - a region where large-scale geological structure changes. Any individual rock may fault or slide or schism or crack at at any particular spot; and on the whole, we can sort of "connect the dots" between places that have clear surface-features indicating the continental-scale fault. But that line isn't the fault.

When I used to teach fault mechanics to kindergarteners (as an outreach program from the Geoscience Department), we used the demo of a graham cracker. We would try to break a stack of graham crackers in half, along the "perforated line." What inevitably happens, of course, is a messy, crumbly, crumb-filled mess of loose sediments and uneven fractures in lots of places. This is a better way to think of a fault - it's not at all like a straight line drawn on a map. For the older classes, we used to take the whole group out on field trips to the San Andreas - say, Crystal Springs Reservoir. Every now and then I'd point to something nondescript, contemplate for a while, and say, "the San Andreas fault is ... here." The point is, of course, that large-scale structures are difficult to describe with small-scale measures. It's not unlike the Coastline paradox or the uncertainty principle; but those descriptions require a bit more advanced mathematical thinking, so I only ever tried to convey these more sophisticated idea to the kindergarteners if they seemed bored by graham crackers.

To bring this back to the OP - you should reformulate your idea as, "how close is the Central Valley to the San Andreas fault?" The answer, then, is "about thirty or fifty miles." Any more precise answer is probably false precision. Nimur (talk) 16:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Let me point to this USGS web page, which shows the locations of all of the major faults in California. The Central Valley is pretty much fault-free. Looie496 (talk) 17:02, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

If the question is being asked to build confidence that no earthquake will occur at the given address, it's worth looking at 2011 Christchurch earthquake. This earthquake in an advanced western nation, which killed 181 people and caused maybe $30 billion worth of damage, was one of three in a year there that "occurred on "blind" or unknown faults". Forecasting earthquakes is still a very uncertain science. HiLo48 (talk) 17:40, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Blind thrust earthquake. WHAAOE! ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 00:03, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Gallien Kreuger

How do they get such a good bass response from the tiny micro bass combo?--92.28.79.226 (talk) 15:02, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Mostly by using a well-designed Class-D amplifier and pumping in a lot of power. In this case, the size of the enclosure is not really the limiting factor; it's really all about the quality of the transducer - they use ceramic speakers and neodymium drivers. Have you read their product literature and user manual? Nimur (talk) 16:43, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

So, since they dont use a bass reflex design, and they use such a small box (<<1cu ft), how is it done exactly? The above links dont give the low down on how ths speaker gets down to 40Hz.--92.29.193.67 (talk) 17:40, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Northern/Southern Leaf Blights?

In reading about the Northern and Southern Leaf BLights on Wikipedia, and in googling them, I haven't actually found anything definite on what corn was hybridized with to help prevent/mitigate/reduce the fungus attacks (I already know about crop rotation, and tilling). Any help? Heck froze over (talk) 17:24, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Lacking any links for it, I can speculate at this point, that the breeders (i.e. the developers) would have selected for varieties that demonstrated resistance to the blight-causing organisms. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:18, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

And now that I've looked at Cochliobolus heterostrophus, it's fairly clear that the article consists entirely of large excerpts from its source reference. In short, it's a copyright violation. The dead giveaway was the reference to something called "T-cms", which was not explained in either place. (Most likely it refers to Cytoplasmic male sterility, which is a trait used in some corn production to avoid the need for detasseling.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:25, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Anything on whether any different plants were used? Heck froze over (talk) 03:46, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean. As noted in Blight, there are various types of blights which affect different crops. The corn leaf blight was/is a fungus. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:11, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Re-reading your original question, asking what corn was "hybridized with", maize is only crossed with maize. What's done is to develop inbred lines which display certain traits, for example resistance to the blight fungus, while at the same time not impacting yield. This is accomplished traditionally through artificial selection. Corn hybrids are produced by crossing inbred lines. If you're asking about genetically modified organisms, i.e. plants whose genes have been altered in the laboratory as opposed to merely trying to isolate traits within the naturally-existing genetics, I don't know the answer to that question, but I can think of different ways it could be done. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:17, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Blackberry color

I just plunked some blackberries into boiling water with my oatmeal. They then changed color from black to red. My questions:

1) Is this normal ?

2) If so, what happened and did they lose any nutritional value, such a phytochemicals ?

3) If not, is it possible my blackberries were red all along and were just dyed black to trick customers ? StuRat (talk) 17:57, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

All the blackberries I've ever cooked with (and I've been doing it for the thick end of 50 years) have turned red when heat has been applied. I can't say what chemical changes took place, perhaps some scientist can. Honestly, a quick Google search would have found plenty of images of cooked blackberries turning red... --TammyMoet (talk) 18:48, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

[5] suggest blackberries contain soluble anthocyanins that function as an indicator being red in acidic solutions and blue in basic ones. According to that and [6] anthocyanins are one of the primary colour pigments in black berries. However I find it unlikely that blackberries are particularly basic, although I have no idea what pH anthocyanins in blackberries change colour at. It could be ripe blackberries are at a level where the where the pigment appears more blue, so if you are cooking something fairly acidic they will look more red.

But I expect that's not really the answer. It doesn't seem to explain StuRat's case as I presume this was just normal water. The solubility may play a part, if you do find whatever you are cooking them in (e.g. the boiling water in StuRat's case) turning red then likely the anthocyanins are leaching out which will probably make them appear less dark. It could also be a change in the pigments during cooking, degradation, change in the co-pigments etc. As [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] attest, pigment changes in berries can be fairly complicated. (Anthocyanin composition in berries can be fairly complicated too [13].)

A perhaps interesting question is why blackberries which start off as red become 'black' as they grow. These [14] [15] [16] may provide a clue although don't seem to directly say. But my guess is it's an increase in pigment levels (probably anthocyanins although in the last ref about highland blackberries it seems they don't have such high anthocyanin levels so I wonder if Ellagitannins which evidentally are a part of what give wines their colour are a factor there) until the pigments are enough to make them look black ([17] seems to say a similar thing). From reading those results, perhaps in particular Cyanidin 3-glucoside which according to some sources [18] generally gives a dark red/purple colour. These results seem to support my guess that a combination of leaching and perhaps degradation probably play a factor.

Nil Einne (talk) 21:47, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Note that there's oatmeal mixed in with the boiling water, and that might affect pH. I didn't notice much color in the oatmeal, and what was there I attributed to popped cells in the berries. StuRat (talk) 21:55, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the oatmeal enters into it. Stewed blackberry and apple is a traditional favourite in the UK (not many folks actually buy them - you just go out and pick them from the brambles which are an annoying weed here). I don't think you even have to cook them, just squashing them yields a red juice. I quote this poem as my reference ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 14:41, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Follow-up: I've started waiting for my oatmeal to cool a bit before adding the blackberries. As a result, they no longer turn red, so apparently temperature is an important consideration. StuRat (talk) 01:29, 13 December 2011 (UTC)