Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2015 July 8

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July 8

What is the mechanism of vein "burnning"?

I used to hear that the veins are 'burned' (disappear) as a result of using IV antibiotics. Is it right? if it's right, what is the mechanism? 194.114.146.227 (talk) 08:49, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

See Collapsed_vein. 196.213.35.146 (talk) 12:42, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

• I was on rather heavy intravenous antibiotics twice, for over a month each time, during which time they took blood every six hours to monitor my liver and kidney function. During that time my entire body felt like it was on fire, worst near the IV entrance itself. The doctor said this burning (as I called it) was not unexpected, and I was given antihistamines and a morphine drip which made the situation tolerable. (The morphine had the effect in the long run of making the incident seem like something I saw on TV, not that happened to me personally, luckily.) They did have to keep moving the IV about every 8 hours, since the flow in the vein would eventually become quite restricted. But there was no long term damage. I think what happens with IV drug use like heroin is different, since it is done with many repeated injection using often dirty or infected needles often poorly administered which causes physical trauma and infection. μηδείς (talk) 16:42, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

The mechanism is typically damage to the vein tissue and possibly scar formation. Numerous drugs can damage or irritate tissue and trigger inflammatory processes such as histamine release. This is a well-known problem with many chemotherapy drugs, for instance. If such drugs need to be administered long-term, practitioners will often insert a PICC or central venous catheter for use with these drugs, to avoid damaging peripheral veins. As noted above, the veins don't exactly "disappear", but they can collapse, which makes them unusable for IV procedures. Repeated venipunctures also result in scarring of the vein, which makes needle insertion harder, as scar tissue is thicker and more fibrous. This generally happens to recreational IV drug users, which is why long-term users need to "hunt for a good vein". --108.38.204.15 (talk) 21:10, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

My Dad had similarly vein problems due to a decade of hemodialysis. He had a chest "port", and that so damaged his veins that they couldn't use them for heart surgery later, and had to do open heart surgery instead. StuRat (talk) 23:45, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Bacterial toxicity of Germanium tetrahydride (germaine)

I have found a number of undocumented references to bacterial toxicity of Germanium tetrahydride, the references all are very close to "Germaine is not toxic to mammals but is toxic to some bacteria". What bacteria is germanium tetrahydride toxic to? and in what concentration. What would be a referred reference for this data? Thank YouIronHead83 (talk) 11:09, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Our article about this chemical is germane (note spelling). Doesn't have specific toxicity info about bacteria, but does note that it is toxic to humans. If anyone finds specific citable info, please add to the article. DMacks (talk) 16:27, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia is geared towards hard sciences and engineering. The use of Germanium and assorted compounds in Semiconductors will be covered but I wouldn't be surprised if this compound is used in other processes. A google search for "Organogermanium antibacterial" yields some research papers regarding bacteria. One showed specificity or "lactic acid bacteria." I have no idea if any of this research has made it into an industrial process. I wouldn't be surprised if it has use in typing bacteria in a lab but haven't seen anything. In volume, semiconductor use dominates. --DHeyward (talk) 11:56, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Do men judge women's attractiveness based on pheremones?

A woman recently told me that women judge their mate based on pheromones, but men don't. I am skeptical of that due to personal experience of becoming more or less attracted to women based on their barely noticeable smell even though they are clean. Is she right or wrong?--Goose Geyser (talk) 16:02, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Pheromones require physical presence. There is plenty of well-documented studies on attraction based solely on photographs, which do not emit pheromones, in both men and women. If anything, the only agreement on studies of attraction is that symmetry is preferred. 209.149.114.69 (talk) 16:08, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Men are rather more visually-oriented. Larry Miller used to say, "Ladies, if you had any idea, even for a second, of how we really look at you, you would never stop slapping us!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:30, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Umm, this is not a big secret unknown to women. The cosmetic and fashion industry is a testament to valuing visual attractiveness. Creating visual appeal is likely not even a conscious choice and is a built in artifact of evolution. I believe in addition to symmetry, "average" is another quality that tends to be attractive. They took 10-50 random photos and used computer software to merge them and create a composite average. The "averaged" photos consistently were considered most attractive when compared to the individual source photos. I think the pheromone stuff is bunk though scents that indicate health or lack of health are likely to affect attractiveness (e.g. pus smells bad for a reason). --DHeyward (talk) 12:13, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Pheromone#Humans does not note any sex-based differences in humans. Note there is still fairly intense debate over how many adult humans have Vomeronasal_organ#Humans, and whether or not they are functional. Though it's not entirely clear how we do it, there is some pretty decent evidence that humans tend to select mates of a different MHC type. See Major_histocompatibility_complex#In_sexual_mate_selection for the general issue, and Human_leukocyte_antigen#In_mate_selection for the human case. See especially the famous "sweaty T-shirt experiment" - Genetic_matchmaking#cite_note-wedekind_1995-1, which was one of the first to describe the issue. As I recall that study showed no strong differences between sexes, but I haven't read it in years. (ETA: the study only had women smell men's T-shirts, so that might be the source of confusion) Read these links and come to your own conclusions, but I think the claim that there are strong differences in the the ability to use pheremones as part of mate selection between human males and females is unsupported. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:10, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Last time I looked at this I remember the evidence against looking impressive, but I was doubtful of it anyway. The first argument is that the vomeronasal organ is absent; yet even if it is absent that doesn't mean the same olfactory neurons couldn't have receptors somewhere nearby. The second is that the important receptor genes are pseudogenized; but I recall looking at the sequence and seeing one of them was a "pseudogene" based on an in frame stop codon that in fact matches the selenocysteine codon. I would want to see proof that the protein is not made, and if that is done in vitro, then there has to be adequate selenium present to make selenocysteine - and things like Eagle's minimal essential medium and Ham's tissue culture medium don't contain this element, and are typically made with extremely distilled water that would not allow it as an impurity. OTOH I don't think I found a SECIS when I looked, but I didn't look that well and I might even be thinking of another human 'pseudogene' I don't believe in. Wnt (talk) 19:03, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

I think that any serious investigation of human pheromones should explain honeymoon rhinitis, or the more transient sort of 'nose erection' that can occur when a scent is imagined. Wnt (talk) 19:05, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the skepticism of VMO as a working mechanism in most adult humans. But I also find the data on MHC/HLA and assortative mating in humans to be fairly compelling, e.g. here [1], as well as the Wedekind T-shirt experiment. Here's a recent review of mechanisms implicated in MHC selection in humans [2]. I didn't read the whole thing but it concludes "[research on MHC in human mate choice] suggests there is a real phenomenon that needs further work to fully elucidate." SemanticMantis (talk) 19:47, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

What is the top miles/gallon for a normal car?

Given a normal car (not one ultra-light, ultra-thin prototype) and a normal track (not a perfectly flat circuit), what is the farthest you can travel per gallon? I am amazed by the 157 mpg of the Volkswagen_Golf#Volkswagen_Golf_GTE. How far can we still go?--Yppieyei (talk) 18:27, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

We have List_of_automotive_superlatives#Fuel_economy, and the highest listed there is Honda_Fit#Fit_EV, listed at 132 mpg - but note that figure as well as your 157 are calculated as gasoline equivalent mpg - see Gasoline_gallon_equivalent for more info on that. So you have to be careful about your units. An all electric or Compressed_air_car could be said to have an efficiency of infinite miles per gallon of gasoline, because they don't need gasoline. However, that would be nearly nonsensical, and not address the true issue of fuel efficiency. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:45, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree. We should only consider cars fully powered by a liquid measured in gallons. That is, gasoline, ethanol, or diesel (I suppose we could include biodiesel, too). I assume the OP didn't realize the Golf GTE, as a hybrid vehicle, can't have it's energy usage measured in "gallons" alone. 21:47, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

I find the listings at List_of_automotive_superlatives#Fuel_economy surprising. Has there really been no improvement in the highest MPG all-diesel and all-gasoline production vehicles in 30 years? Deli nk (talk) 19:37, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is that increases in engine efficiency have been matched by increases in weight. See e.g. here [3] [4] [5]. Here's an article titled "Why Mileage Hasn't Improved in 25 Years" [6] that pretty much agrees with my claim. More about weight gain here [7] [8]. From the first "The average new car weighed 3,221 pounds in 1987 but 4,009 pounds in 2010" I don't know where the rest of you live but in my area of TX, USA it seems most people think they need a ~5k lb truck or SUV to drive a few miles across town :-/ SemanticMantis (talk) 20:58, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

What is a "normal" car? Do you mean an automobile that can be legally operated on public roadways in certain specific countries using a conventional, non-commercial operator's license? Nimur (talk) 19:28, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

OP says both a "normal" car and a "normal" track but "normal" is subjective and relative to what they have in their mind. We probably won't be able to do more than point OP to some lists of various tests and let them make their own determination of what they consider normal. Dismas|^(talk) 20:44, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Car mileage is not determined on a 'normal' track. Rather a rolling road in a lab... No head winds, air drag, hills, interior upholstery can be striped out, spare tire removed, tires over inflated, power-steering, air conditioning, power brake belts removed etc. Alternator (and other electrical loads) disabled etc. Therefore the 157 mpg of the Volkswagen_Golf#Volkswagen_Golf_GTE is not a normal car when under goings “official” economy tests. You would not be 'amazed' if you knew all the tricks that manufactures employ.--Aspro (talk) 20:56, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

• Instead of questioning the specifics, anyone is free to give referenced answers for whatever "normal" means to you - just explain what you're talking about and why -- we might learn something other than the fact that it's hard to nail down specific parameters for questions (we already knew that :) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:00, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Sure, here's a Society of Automotive Engineers article from 2010: Putting a label on fuel economy no easy task, explaining how some engineers think that it's not fair to put a "fuel economy" label on an electric or hybrid- vehicle. Here's a followup from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, who instituted new car labeling rules in May 2011. So - what is normal today was not normal five years ago!

When I say the question requires clarification, it is not my hope to nitpick: it is to help the OP think like an engineer. I once worked as a researcher for a major automotive manufacturer, and one among my many research objectives was to study how to even formulate the technical problems that face automotive engineering companies as they deal with emerging technologies like alternative energy. Answering technical questions is often easy, once the question is well-formed! Refining a question into a form that is answerable requires a sort of maturity that develops with research experience, and I think it can be instructive to help guide questioners towards this goal.

So, when I ask for the OP to please refine or define "normal" in the context of their question, I am not saying this with malice. I am hoping to get some clarification, so that we can decide how best to provide answers. Nimur (talk) 00:14, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

• Agreed again. We do too much nitpicking and not enough answering here. StuRat (talk) 21:48, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

These two article might make it clear, that inhaling too much gasoline vapor can lead manufactures into making extraordinary claims: How we test cars. How we test mpg & Why you can't match your car's claimed fuel economy--Aspro (talk) 21:47, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

• By "normal" I mean a car that could become a commercial product, and as said above by @Nimur, ""legally operated on public roadways" by an average driver. If you need something more concrete, think of a 1000 kg car in the form of a Golf. It is not so flat that would be inconvenient to drive, it can carry 4-5 people at least, traveling in stop-and-go traffic or on a random road not specially prepared for testing. That excludes a car in the form of a flat-slab, made of some pretty light, but delicate material, and that would never be appropriate to everyday use. And that holds just one person (the driver) and has tires like a bicycle. It excludes driving in circuits too. As a benchmark, imagine that the car is accelerating to 100 km/h in 20 sec, driving 1 min at 100 and then braking to stop.

• What is the amount of energy you'll need to drive it around 100 km? How energy (d)efficient are motors running gas/diesel/electricity/ethanol/LNG or any other fuel that has found its way into mass produced street vehicles? (that means, exclude an electric nuclear car or other sci-fiction stuff). How far are we from a point were efficiency cannot be improved anymore? --Yppieyei (talk) 01:42, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

So, you would intentionally exclude a vehicle like the Smart Cabriolet, which is legal to operate on roadways in the USA, but cannot carry four passengers, and weighs significantly less than 1000 kg? This style of vehicle has potential for great fuel efficiency.

If we answer these questions using pure theory, we concoct some very strange answers. Applying pure Newtonian physics - specifically, the principle of inertia - we find that it requres exactly zero fuel to maintain a velocity of 100 km/hr, as long as the vehicle never accelerates or decelerates. Applying even more pure physics, we know that this implies a frictionless vehicle, which is unrealistic. So, to study the problem in depth, we need to determine how much energy loss a vehicle suffers due to friction - with the roadway, with the powertrain, its rolling resistance on the load-bearing axles, and aerodynamic deceleration due to air resistance. I'll dig up a review article explaining how we can calculate these losses; I have one in my archives somewhere. To paraphrase, we're already very close to engineering limits. Without a quantitative estimate of what we can realistically achieve, we will end up estimating fuel consumptions that err by orders of magnitude from any car that will sell commercially in the next few decades.

If we investigate engine energy efficiency from pure theory, carnot efficiency tells us how much work we can extract from an engine with a specific temperature gradient; stoichiometry tells us how much hear we can extract from gasoline when burned in normal air. Are we to rule out other options? What about a turbocharger, which is a standard component of many sports cars that sell in the United States, and effectively changes the stoichiometry by altering the chemical composition and pressure of the input oxidizer (by highly compressing the air intake, and/or reflowing hot exhaust gases)? What if we change the chemical composition of retail gasoline (as we have done in the past for environmental and regulatory reasons)? Is leaded gasoline under consideration? How about E85 (15% ethanol mixed with petroleum-based gasoline), which is what some of the retail stations sell me in California? I can measurably boost my Toyota's fuel efficiency by filling up with ordinary gasoline - 15 to 30% by government test!

And most importantly, what do we make of alternative energy sources like the ones we see on a plug-in hybrid, or a pure electric vehicle?

These are important questions. If we can't answer these questions accurately, then you'll be stuck with a very hand-wavey answer.

You ask how far we are from a point where the energy efficiency can not be improved. This is a difficult question. We are very close to the efficiency limits dictated by pure stoichiometric relationships and thermodynamics. Extra effort in these areas may yield fractional percentage points of improvement. This limit tells us how much power an engine can produce for a given amount of fuel. That is not the problem we care about! What we really need to do is to consume less fuel. We are making great strides to improve vehicle safety in lower weight class vehicles: so this enables us to build safe cars that can run comfortably with smaller engines. However, the greatest challenges are that we must sell vehicles: people want to pay money for bigger, less-energy-efficient cars. People are intentionally choosing engines that are more powerful and less efficient, and they are willing to pay for the fuel that is needed to drive. Much fuel is wasted, too: the United States Department of Transportation estimates that anywhere from 10 to 20% of gasoline in private vehicles is wasted because of red lights. This has been shown over and over and over in study after study: here is one, selected at random from their website, [9]. Probably the most significant improvement in fuel consumption reduction will come from intelligent coordination of traffic signals to improve the statistical likelihood that any individual car can coast through a green light. This is a technology that will probably reside mostly outside the car and will probably have no impact on the engineers who work on automotive engines. Yet, the magnitude of this change is huge: if the DOT estimates are correct, then we can put this in simple terms: by using smart statistical schedulers to eliminate red lights, we could reduce total fuel consumption by 20%. For every five oil tankers that show up in San Francisco Bay, one would become redundant.

Along the same lines, we can already power a legal, commercially-available vehicle using only electric batteries: that brings the gasoline consumption to zero. It also foists the problem of supplying a nation's worth of vehicle electricity onto the poor unwitting civil engineers who manage our electric grid. Here's a 2005 report from EPRI: Electric Transportation Research, Environmental and Societal Benefits of Electrifying Transportation.

There is a reason that today's automotive manufacturers have more career openings for software engineers, electronics engineers, and fewer openings for mechanical engineers (who specialize in engine theory and practice). The problems we must solve are not the same as the problems engineers solved in 1950.

Long story short: don't fixate on mileage per gallon. It's a great metric for car salesmen, but it's not a metric that really helps us reduce our fuel use or improve our environment. You should not view this single parameter in isolation as the be-all, end-all of vehicle environmental impact.

Nimur (talk) 14:41, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

A lot of cars estimate how many miles more one can drive on the fuel they have so this should be a reasonable estimate. However if they are anything like mine they overestimate and then bring the figure down sharply based on one's driving. I feel my car has a supercilious attitude saying I am not good enough for it. It is not helped by my not taking a mobile with me so it says it can't call for help for me when I crash it. Dmcq (talk) 09:45, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

GGE source ?

Our gasoline gallon equivalent article states: "The ratings are based on EPA's formula, in which 33.7 kilowatt hours of electricity is equivalent to one gallon of gasoline..." So, where did the EPA get that figure ? Do you actually get that much electricity when burning a gallon of gasoline ? If so, I'm not sure why a car would go some three times as far on the same amount of energy, just because that energy is in the form of electricity. StuRat (talk) 15:00, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I always assumed it was based on equivalence in cost to the consumenr. -- Q Chris (talk) 15:12, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

That doesn't seem workable, to me, as the cost of both electricity and gasoline vary with location, time, taxes, etc., so the ratio of costs is far from fixed. StuRat (talk) 15:14, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

As explained in our article, the EPA does not define the GGE parameter: gallons gasoline equivalent is defined by NIST, and was added to their Handbook 44-11, Specifications, Tolerances, and Other Technical Requirements for Weighing and Measuring Devices, in 1994: Appendix D. If you would like to read about how the EPA applies these definitions, you can check the reference I linked earlier - Fuel Economy Labels..., or browse http://www.fueleconomy.gov to get some more context.

"MPGe" is a different metric, defined by EPA. In this astonishing government report, Environmental Protection Agency Fuel Economy Label - Final Report (2010), "For electric-only vehicles, focus group participants favored an MPG equivalent, ‘MPGe.’ This was in spite of the fact that they did not understand, nor did they feel the need to understand how an MPGe metric was calculated. This again suggests that the desire for simplicity and familiarity outweighs the desire for accurate information." (Recall how I alluded, above, to the fact that you probably won't like the answers if you dig too deeply into them?)

While looking for this definition, I found EPA's website, Highest Fuel Economy by Vehicle Class: 2015 Model Year, which probably is the most direct answer to the original question so far.

Nimur (talk) 16:04, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Do any of those links describe how they came up with "33.7 kilowatt hours of electricity is equivalent to one gallon of gasoline" ? StuRat (talk) 16:19, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, "MPGe" is a largely fictitious value that was added to the label because consumers wished to receive incorrect information, and the regulators granted that in response to popular demand.

The actual numerical conversion factor, "33.7 kilowatt-hours per gallon of gasoline", comes from the approximate lower heating value (heat of combustion) and the density of gasoline. You can play with a calculator to figure this out. I calculated an equivalency of 36.0 kilowatt hours, but what difference does a 10% error make when the parameter is completely useless?

Nimur (talk) 16:34, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't see a formula in that section. If I understand you correctly, 1 gallon of gasoline really can provide 33.7 - 36.0 KwH of electricity. Is that assuming 100% efficiency in the conversion ? StuRat (talk) 16:47, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

It might help to look at efficiency in the entire process. This is how a fair comparison might look:

MPG based on gasoline (less evaporation and spillage) 
  -> work (less conversion inefficiency)

MPGe based on gasoline (less evaporation and spillage) 
  -> electricity (less conversion inefficiency and storage/transmission losses) 
  -> work (less conversion inefficiency)

So, since MPG considers all the inefficiencies, do they also consider all the inefficiencies in the MPGe calculation process, to be fair ? (Admittedly nobody is likely to actually burn gasoline to make electricity for an electric car, but that is what MPGe means, doesn't it ? Maybe they also need to come up with "pounds of coal equivalent", etc.) StuRat (talk) 17:01, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

"...nobody is likely to actually burn gasoline to make electricity for an electric car..." Have you heard of the Chevrolet Volt? This is exactly what it does! The Voltec is not a hybrid gas/electric powertrain. (Compare to the Hybrid Synergy Drive, for example, where the Continuously Variable Transmission actually mechanically combines torque from a gasoline motor drive-shaft and an electric motor ). Instead, the Volt is a 100% electric vehicle whose electricity comes from a gasoline-fueled electric generator. Nimur (talk) 17:10, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I should have been more clear: "Nobody is actually going to burn gasoline at a large-scale power plant, then transmit the electricity long distances to the charge the car". But, in your example of the Chevy Volt, how does MPGe compare to the actual miles achieved per gallon of gasoline used ? (I see the article lists 41 MPG, so what would be the MPGe rating, if we had used that ?) StuRat (talk) 23:26, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

For example, Chevy's Volt performance website lists a total range of 380 miles. The gas tank on the 2012 model holds 9.3 gallons. That means that if you fill the car and start driving, the manufacturer expects you to run out of fuel after 380 miles, and the car will no longer produce power. If you do some arithmetic, this works to just about 41 miles per gallon, which is almost on par with similar compact vehicles in the gas/electric hybrid marketplace, and competive with some conventional (non-hybrid) compact vehicles.

Yet, the EPA number is 94 miles per gallon equivalent. Where does this number come from? Well, the vehicle is also a plug-in hybrid. You need not drive until the fuel tank is empty: you may stop, plug the vehicle in at a charging station, and charge the battery (without adding gasoline). You may even repeat this process many times.

The manufacturer claims that a user who plugs in to charge regularly may average 900 miles between gasoline fill-ups. If you divide 900 miles by 9.3 gallons, it yields much closer to 100 miles "per gallon," listed as the "MPGe," although the "gallon" in question is not actually a unit of energy in "gallons of gasoline equivalent." It is, in fact, only counting the gallons of gasoline, but not in any way accounting for the electricity energy put in via charging. This works if you don't pay for electricity and neglect the marginal environmental consequences of consuming utility electricity! But if you are concerned about equivalence for the purposes of determining cost and/or environmental impact, this value is totally fictional.

Calculation of a ratio, using the wrong denominator, yields dramatically bad numerical results. It is analogous to calculating your average hourly wage by dividing your paycheck by the number of minutes you require to deposit your paycheck (which only occurs once every two weeks). You might be earning thousands of dollars per minute for a very small number of minutes!

EPA also allows individuals to report their own data: users report anywhere from 39 to 1,462 miles per gallon. This data is collected but not verified by the Government. I do not believe some of the reported values, especially the data that imply a user has driven over 12,000 miles without ever refilling the gas tank. Even Chevrolet does not promote this outlandish claim; their marketing literature estimates less than one tenth of that value even in ideal conditions.

Nimur (talk) 00:36, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Isn't infinite miles per gallon possible, if you never use gasoline but rely strictly on the plug-in charging method (meaning you only made short hops between charging stations) ? Of course, I agree that the term is meaningless if they don't also account for the cost of the electricity. I also had the same issue when they called all-electric vehicles "zero emissions vehicles". That's zero tailpipe emissions, as the coal they are probably burning to make that electricity has lots of emissions associated with it. StuRat (talk) 00:45, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

What is a Booker T bird?

I'm not even sure how I would look this up nless others have made the same observation I did.

While in the mountains last month I heard a bird that said, "Booker T! Booker T! Booker T!" I may have heard the bird before but never asked.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:26, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Probably not it but this made me think of a whippoorwill for some reason. The call can be found here. Dismas|^(talk) 20:41, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Birds can't voice the plosive 'b' yet they can get very close to it. So when the OP says he heard “Booker T!” I take it, that it sounded like Booker T!. However, there are mountains all over this planet. It might help if he narrows down this audio delight geographically. I.E. The Australian Lyrebird had me looking around for my smart phone all ruddy day.--Aspro (talk) 21:15, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

The Eastern towhee and Red-winged blackbird have calls similiar to that. And (shameless plug) I've recorded hundreds of hours of whip-poor-will song this summer. https://archive.org/details/@digrpat --Digrpat (talk) 21:33, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Just a thought, could it be a skilled mimic that has heard too much Darrell Waltrip: "Boogity, boogity, boogity..."? AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:49, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Ho Ho Ho :-)--Aspro (talk) 22:00, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot to mention I was in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina but that would narrow it down too much. My Internet is too slow to listen to anything right now, so I'll try tomorrow and post if anything matches.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:56, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

The mockingbirds throughout the Carolinas mimic car alarms. I live a couple hours south of Lake Junaluska. I have plenty of mocking birds in the woods behind my house. As soon as the sun comes up, they start going: "whoop whoop whoop beeyou beeyou beeyou chirp chirp chirp bootee bootee bootee whoop whoop whoop..." 209.149.114.69 (talk) 12:40, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I already knew what whippoorwills sounded like. Now that I have fast enough Internet I can definitely say that's not it.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:40, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

It might have worked for me to play the audio in Wikipedia's articles. But I'd have to turn the speakers on and off. I don't like being startled when I turn the computer on. No to Eastern towhee, but the Red-winged blackbird might be it. I can't be absolutely sure. I didn't identify where because I didn't want to get too specific. I guess no one would have assumed there are only so many species in Lake Junaluska.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:44, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Roger penrose is an atheist

Is it really true that Roger Penrose is an atheist? Thats what Wikipedia claims, in the section called religious views, but the source doesn't mention his religious views at all. I don't believe that he could be atheist, since he developed a quantum theory to explain how life after death occurs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joey13952 alternate account (talk • contribs) 22:33, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

@Joey13952 alternate account: I hope you don't mind, I have linked Roger Penrose in your question above. DuncanHill (talk) 12:46, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

The statement is sourced. If you follow the link you can hear Pernrose describe himself as an atheist. Although I am not familiar with his theories, I don't think that belief in an afterlife logically requires belief in a deity. - Lindert (talk) 22:46, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

The content doesn't seem to be working. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joey13952 alternate account (talk • contribs) 23:06, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

It's probably UK-only. At 02:48, Penrose says "I tend to steer clear of this argument - I'm not a believer myself, I don't believe in established religions of any kind, I would say I'm an atheist." Tevildo (talk) 23:32, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Oddly enough, the link works for me, though trying to link to the main page doesn't - it takes me to the international edition. Go figure. And as regards afterlife vs. deity, it is also not unheard of to believe in a deity but not an afterlife. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:43, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Logically, if Penrose is arguing that consciousness and afterlife can be explained by science, then he is implicitly arguing that belief in the afterlife is perfectly compatible with disbelief in God or any other form of the supernatural. This statement is independent of course, of the plausibility of his arguments. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:26, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. Penrose is an advocate of full-blown Cartesian substance dualism, but (as far as I know) has made no statement about the fate of the ψυχή on the demise of the σῶμα, or that the ψυχή is in any way supernatural. It's also important to note that one can be an atheist (in the sense of not believing in God, or even making the positive statement "God does not exist"), without being a fully paid-up member of the Dawkins/Myers/O'Hair camp of passionate opposition to anything other than strict reductive materialism. Tevildo (talk) 08:23, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Penrose is not a dualist. He thinks that digital computers and brains are both made of atoms, but computers don't exploit the full computational power of quantum gravity, and brains exploit more of it, or a different part of it. -- BenRG (talk) 17:31, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Correct, his ideas in this area are not consistent with Cartesian dualism, in that they are predicated on notions of a fully physical system with specific mechanisms (even be they vague defined assertions of unsubstantiated and quantum effects). It is worth noting, however, that these notions (which are well outside the cosmological applications of physics for which he gained acclaim in the scientific community broadly) are very wonky and widely discredited by actual cognitive scientists (including numerous neuroscientists and biophysicists), and in that sense there are some parallels to the vagueries of classical dualism. His theories in this vein do include a little bit more meat on the bone than you usually find amongst those of "quantum consciousness" proponents (that is, we're not talking Deepak Chopra levels of blurring of the science with mysticism), but they still don't pass muster for logical consistency in the consensus of actual brain/cognition researchers, let alone have any evidenciary support. This is kind of a classic case (which one sees on occasion) of a brilliant scientist hypothesizing outside of his wheelhouse, with some cooky results. Snow ^{let's rap} 01:55, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

I can't find any evidence that Penrose believes in an afterlife. Stuart Hameroff is the one talking about that, and his only connection to Penrose is that they collaborated on Orch-OR, which has nothing to do with life after death. -- BenRG (talk) 06:30, 9 July 2015 (UTC)