Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2014 December 28

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December 28

Johann and Stefan Rausch Craniopagus Twins

Who are Johann and Stefan Rausch listed on this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniopagus_twins? The film Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story also refers to the Rausch twins. However, the film details the Rausch twins' surgery as 5 September 1987, the same day that Dr. Ben Carson separated Benjamin and Patrick Binder. Are Johann and Stefan Rausch the same as Patrick and Benjamin Binder, and if so, why do the twins have two sets of names? Thank you. DavidGStevens (talk) 01:11, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Frost overnight on cars

Why is it that when a car frosts up over night, making it cold inside the car with air con makes the frost disappear faster? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.132.227.186 (talk) 09:31, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Is it true? I find that lots of heat is necessary to get rid of frost. Perhaps you mean that the interior condensation from your breath is reduced when cold air is circulated? This would be because warm air can hold more water vapour, which means that more water condenses onto the cold windscreen. Dbfirs 09:44, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, recommended defrost setting is full fan, full heat, full a/c, full recirc. There's a couple of reasons. running full a/c and full heat dehumidifies the ventilating air, so preventing or reducing misting up on the inside of the windows. running full a/c puts more load on the engine, so it warms up faster, so the heater has more effect. Full recirc is used so that the heated air recirculates. However, once the car is reasonably warm it is a good idea to bleed off some of the cabin air as it will be quite humid. The specific recommendation will vary depending on the ambient conditions. This is a much less interesting question than I thought you'd ask - why does the windscreen of a car frost up sometimes overnight even if the surroundings don't? Greglocock (talk) 10:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Because the windshield cools faster. I had an interesting case where I could see the frame of the hood through the hood, in the frost pattern, because those areas above the frame were kept warm longer and didn't frost up. It looked just like an X-ray. StuRat (talk) 15:57, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

( ... from evaporative cooling and radiative cooling, of course.) (This is a timely question here in the UK, because this is the first day this winter that my car windscreen has remained "totally opaque" with a thick white coating all day. I haven't driven it, of course.) Dbfirs 17:52, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

If there's frost on the car windows, at least you know there's moisture in the air. It's somewhat startling to emerge on a day where it's below 0 F. and find no frost on the windows. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:05, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I once arrived at a customer's premises just a few minutes after bright early morning sunlight began shining on a frost covered lawn. Most of the frost had already melted, except where a tree had cast a perfect shadow. A frosty image of the tree, which was striking to see. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 19:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. And with maybe just a word change or two, you've just written a little poem about it. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:31, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

late reproduction - quick evolution

Does reproduction at a later age lead to quick & better evolution? a giraffe, for example, lives for 25 years, attains sexual maturity at 4th year. Some million years ago, when their necks were not long as it is now, they'd passed their genes at the 4th year and continue to struggle eating leaves at the top of a tree for the rest of their years, it is during this time they are adapting/equipping themselves more. So, the genes when passes at this time would have a developed trait for offspring. When this is not the case, it takes a lot of time to accumulate the better quality to show up in offsprings. So, i ask is reproduction at a later age lead to quick evolution? -anandh, chennai — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.133.100 (talk) 13:35, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I understand you correctly, but you seem to be asking if the offspring of a 25 year old giraffe have "better" genes and are better adapted to browsing from trees than those of a 4 year old giraffe? The answer to that is a firm no. The traits are passed to offspring by genes that as a rule don't change in a lifetime. Is that what you were asking? 13:48, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

(EC) It sounds to be like you're confused about modern evolutionary synthesis and various core parts like evolution, inheritance and genetics. Lamarckism is considered mostly wrong nowadays. Slightly more so than in the past, there is some acceptance of Lamarckism like inheritance via transgenerational epigenetics by some biologists, but even in that case, it's not normally considered anywhere are strong as you suggest and would probably not be considered to have anything to do with neck length in giraffes. Nil Einne (talk) 13:54, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It sounds to me like the OP isn't that confused at all. During the period of time when animals are sexually mature, they continue to undergo selection, generally by different criteria than during childhood, so selection will tend to favor different characteristics depending on when the animals reproduce. But the sticking point is what is "quick" evolution? It supposes some end-point you can measure, but in a laboratory test the speed of selection will depend on the characteristic. For example, a condition causing stillbirth will be selected out of the population most quickly if animals breed when young, since more of the non-stillbirth alleles are passed through to the next generation by the larger number of young survivors. And of course breeding while young reduces the generation time for an overall increase in speed of evolution. But a condition causing heart attacks in older giraffes will not be selected against at all if only the young breed, so there older breeding does indeed 'speed up' evolution. Where this probably comes in to ongoing research topics of interest is with invasive species, since it is well established that special conditions occur at the advancing front of an insect pest as it spreads across a continent (for example, bigger wing muscles so they fly faster). Presumably invasive species at the front also tend to focus their selection more on traits that encourage survival to the first breeding rather than to later breedings, since those later individuals are left somewhere behind in the infected area. Wnt (talk) 14:26, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree with that, although I think the OP is indeed quite confused, as the question pretty clearly indicates a Lamarckian understanding, which is definitely wrong. But let me mention another factor. Recent studies have shown that males steadily accumulate mutations as they age, which show up in their sperm. (This doesn't happen so much to female egg cells, which are all present at birth.) So, older fathers tend to produce offspring with higher levels of variation. One result is a higher incidence of genetically-related problems such as autism. Another result may be a higher incidence of beneficial mutations, but the data so far don't favor that as far as I know. Looie496 (talk) 14:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

it is only after reading the discussion that i know i'm inclined to lamarckism. Provided i follow that, the above question has some sense. I wanted to know how cockroaches adapt generations after generations to the toxins that we spray (not just through genes because adaptations may be somatic). There should be something else.. a musician's son plays music well or easier. Also i doubt if a guy with low iq has an earlier child with low iq and after he becomes brilliant, his later child would have increased iq (let's no consider the influencing factors like mother's iq)??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.133.100 (talk) 15:34, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Lamarckism has long been widely denounced; it is also worth noting that Lamarck had some pretty vague philosophical notions. Darwin himself proposed a theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics which was founded on the notion of "gemmules", which in his usage referred to the transmission of genetic information from cell to cell. After decades of denunciation, it turns out that there is limited support for some ideas of acquired inheritance via epigenetics, such as in the variable yellow mouse, and in fact some people have gone back and shown that Lysenko's original ideas (taken from conversations with Russian peasant farmers) of conditioning plant seeds to a new environment have some truth to them. There is no known route to go from epigenetic conditioning over a few generations to permanent inheritance. However, that said, it is known that small RNAs like miRNA can influence chromatin configuration, which can influence DNA methylation, and that DNA methylation can cause transition mutations, C to T, G to A; and the GC content of DNA is in fact far from random, e.g. at CpG islands. And either small RNAs or hormones that influence their levels, or influence chromatin directly, may be distributed throughout the body (with small RNAs it varies a lot by organism though). So I should encourage you, but at the same time, exercise caution, as this is neither proven nor is it all that likely to have a major overall effect in long-term evolution. Wnt (talk) 16:38, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You seem to be labouring under some misconceptions. First of all, there is some dispute as to whether giraffes evolved with longer necks so they could reach higher leaves or whether the long neck evolved as a secondary sexual characteristic see:Girrafe#Neck. Secondly, cockroaches and other animals adapt to the toxins used to control them by Survival of the fittest. Most of them die from the toxins but the few that have a natural immunity to them - because of genetic mutations - live and go on to breed and produce resistant offspring. Also, someone with a low IQ doesn't later become brilliant - the IQ changes little throughout life. And lastly, some musicians' sons play well, either through nature or nurture, and some don't play at all. Richerman (talk) 17:08, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

thanks.. misconceptions might have arose because of disputes in theories. Giraffes' reason for evolution is not the debate but process of passing the better qualities in them is. Secondly, camouflaged butterflies duck their predators upon seeing the others' misfortune, they are not survivors that are selected because they are the fittest but they are the existing ones that fit themselves to survive, via generations. Genetic mutation might have a cause or a reason. Many times it is a Cause that goes futile or is helpful in getting good qualities. Other times it (mutation) is formed because of previous similar exposures to threats. Nothing happens without a reason. IQ point is just an example, i wanted to know if someone refines himself of certain qualities in his later half of life, the baby that is born then be affected with those or not. Your answer is no. Fine. Lastly, there is an old proverb that says family work-expertise runs through generations. The gene that carries the music-expertise information is passed on to his son and it is the son's wish or interest to pursue further (apart from environmental influence). People only wonder if a musician's son doesn't play music well (even if his father is not nearby to nurture). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.133.100 (talk) 18:55, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Expanding Earth vs. plate tectonics

Where is the coup de grace from satellite measurements that shows that the "expanding Earth" theory can't be right? I have looked for it for hours and all I find is waffle or deleted pages. Surely satellites such as LAGEOS II have settled this issue by now? Why the fog? Captainbeefart (talk) 13:38, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

According to references in the article on Expanding Earth, this has been proven without using satelites - so why waste satellite time (which is not cheap) on it? WegianWarrior (talk) 14:33, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It is not a theory but a hypothesis. So one runs with those hypothesis that gains ground on any evidence as it accumulates which can be independently cross-matched, to upgrade that original hypothesis into a theory. Whilst any hypothesis that can't attract such evidence, fades into obscurity. There are only 24 hours in the day and scientists have better things to do, than waist time in debunking each and every hypothesis that was ever imagined.--Aspro (talk) 15:07, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

"waist time" = time to eat leftovers, so they go to your waist instead of going to waste. StuRat (talk) 16:04, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

If the Earth was expanding, why would we have subduction zones, caused by plates running into each other ? StuRat (talk) 16:10, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, there are many ways to easily show that the expanding Earth hypothesis is wrong - Expanding_Earth#Scientific_consensus lists eight different ways that this has been done without the need for satellite data. So there is clearly no need to use satellites to debunk an already completely and utterly debunked idea.

If you look at Expanding_Earth#Present_day_advocates, you'll see that the main advocates of this unlikely idea are:

• J. Marvin Herndon - a scientist with no really specific credentials in this area who is widely known for producing reams of ideas that are contrary to what is already known and well-proven.
• Neal Adams who has no scientific qualifications whatever and who works as a comic-book artist.

I'm also not clear what you imagine the satellite might measure that would be better than measurements we do here on earth. The hypothesized expansion rate would be of the order of millimeters per year - and there is no way for a satellite camera to image the entire earth to sufficient precision to do that - nor to observe for long enough to measure a more substantial change over decades. Measurements of the distance between two fixed points on earth might produce some results - but we already do that using the reverse approach of using GPS satellites to tell us where we are on the ground and thereby measure how the ground is moving - and those results merely confirm that there is no uniform expansion.

If you have an idle moment: http://what-if.xkcd.com/67/

SteveBaker (talk) 17:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

This xkcd is generally good but it has one fairly clear error: it suggests the density of an expanding Earth would have to increase in order for it to collapse into a black hole. But as explained at that article, a 10⁸ solar mass black hole has the density of water. The density of Earth's inner+outer core is at least 10 times that, and according to the article the density needed to make a black hole is inversely proportional to the square of the mass, so a 10^7.5 solar mass Earth would contain a black hole even if by plot device we suppose it defied the Chandrasekar limit and Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limits. It would become one soon after; the zonation of this seems determined by File:EarthGravityPREM.svg, assuming proportional increase in all accelerations. Wnt (talk) 21:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I suggest that you guys have missed my point. I apologize for not having explained it well enough. Opinions and received wisdom are death to science. Read about Chladmi and weep. Never mind the secondary evidence. There must by now be primary evidence. I know that radio telescopes all around the globe stop at a particular point in the day and then all focus on a source in Orion and then talk to one another for ten minutes. They establish exactly where they are on the geode relative to one other. They corrected for the jump in the crust of the Earth when the great earthquake occurred off Indonesia with such horrible consequences not all that long ago. The telescopes provide primary evidence of drift. Satellites such as LAEOGIS II were designed to do the same thing. Ray Charles could have seen that the OBSERVED pattern of drift of points on the surface of the planet would have to have been different if (1) Carey was right or (2) Wegener was right. There ought by now to be a PRIMARY stake though the heart of Carey's delusions but I can't find it. I meet with blank pages at NASA and Ah-Ya elsewhere. In reply please spare me your shallow opinions about what you think you believe. Point me at THE EVIDENCE and I shall forever be in your debt.... Captainbeefart (talk) 13:15, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Expanding_Earth#Scientific_consensus (and the references it links to) are it. That's the evidence - it's compelling and completely debunks the expanding earth concept. There is simply no need to go to all the trouble you describe. We don't go to a lot of trouble to dispel the flat-earth myth either. SteveBaker (talk) 17:13, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Blood-alcohol level

Quoting Drunk driving in the United States:

Federal Aviation Regulation 91.17 (14 CFR 91.17) prohibits pilots from flying aircraft with an alcohol level of 0.04% or more, or within eight hours of consuming alcohol, or while under the impairing influence of any drug.

Maybe it's because I've never consumed much alcohol, but I don't understand how you could have any alcohol in your system 8+ hours after drinking any, unless you were so badly drunk as to be in a medical emergency when alcohol levels were at your peak. What am I missing? Nyttend (talk) 15:27, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

When you get down to that level you might get there without drinking booze. Rum cake, medications, etc., might be enough. StuRat (talk) 16:07, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It is quite possible, and not abnormal, for such levels to remain in the system for more than 8 hours after only a "normal" session of drinking. Here in the UK, one general rule-of-thumb says you lose about 1 unit per hour, and a unit is around 1/3 of a pint of beer or half a glass of wine. So just 4 glasses of wine could keep you over the limit 8 hours later. The specific rate varies greatly depending on ones metabolism.[1] Over the festive season, a great many drivers are breathalysed 'over the limit' the morning after Xmas parties. Hopefully not too many pilots though. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 16:22, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

This is a very complicated matter...and the difficulty is how to encapsulate that into a rule that is both easy for a pilot to understand - and legally enforceable, should the need arise.

An excellent reference as to how alcohol is removed from the body is here [2] - it points out dramatic differences in the rates that alchol is removed - women have different removal rates than men, East Asians and Native Americans have very slow removal rates, older men and menopausal women get intoxicated on less alcohol, frequent heavy drinkers can also metabolize the stuff more quickly, and people with liver damage, more slowly.

Even more complicated is the way that alcohol enters the blood stream through the digestive tract. If you eat a good sized meal before drinking, the alcohol remains in the stomach (where it is absorbed into the blood fairly slowly) - but if you don't, the alcohol quickly runs into the small intestine where it's absorbed almost immediately. So if someone eats a lot, then drinks a lot, the blood alcohol levels would continue to climb long after they stop drinking. Carbonated drinks are absorbed more rapidly than non-carbonated. Diet sodas increase the rate of absorption compared to sugary soda.

So neither the blood-alcohol level or the time-since-last-drink measurements are perfect predictors of one's ability to fly a plane. Relying on just the blood-alcohol levels would not fairly account for the problem of older men/menopausal women being more intoxicated with less alcohol - and time-since-last-drink doesn't account properly for differing rates of metabolism between different people. Adding both requirements is at least some kind of a band-aid to better ensure that the pilot is unlikely to be intoxicated while flying.

However, I suspect that the hours-since-last-drink rule is there for legal reasons. You can't always pull a pilot out of the plane before take-off to administer a blood-alcohol test right there and then...but hours, days or weeks after a pilot is suspected of having committed some horrible error due to being intoxicated, you can find eye-witnesses to him having been drinking at a party late the previous night - and you can prosecute on the hours-since-last-drink rule.

Hours-since-last-drink is also a good rule for the pilot himself. If he has a few drinks and wonders if he's OK to fly - he can't very well predict what his blood alcohol levels will be by the time he's on board the airplane ready to go (because he's a moderate drinker with a small amount of liver damage, ate a moderate - but not huge - amount of food while drinking, mixed diet coke with his rum, and has a Native American father). But if the rule is really simple...he can think: "I'd better leave the party before midnight because I'm flying to L.A at 9 o-clock tomorrow."

SteveBaker (talk) 16:37, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

As SteveBaker says, the rule is there partly for convenience of the pilot, as well as the convenience of enforcement. There have been cases of pilots being arrested on entering the cockpit, after stopping at an airport bar during a layover, and it isn't necessary to breathanalyze, as long as it is known that what the pilot consumed at the bar contained alcohol. For convenience of the pilot, if he leaves the party before midnight and enters the cockpit at 9 am, he is clear on the clock rule. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:08, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Also, it is my recollection that a decrease in air pressure affects the effect of blood alcohol (even if the blood alcohol is itself what would normally considered a trace quantity). Even if the pilot was qualified to drive to the airport, and to take the plane off, he may not be qualified to continue the climbout when the plane is pressurized to effective 4000 feet or effective 8000 feet. There is also a caveat that I don't entirely recall having to do with increases in pressure, but the basic idea is that one should not go scuba diving one afternoon and then fly the next morning. At least that is what I recall from private pilot training 35 years ago. If you fly a light plane to an island, don't go scuba diving on your last day, if you plan to fly the light plane home. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:08, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

8 hours "bottle to throttle" is simply to make sure all alcohol is metabolized. It's secondary to the 0.04 limit meaning if you are 0.04 after 8 hours, you are considered impaired. A heavy drinker may still be above 0.04 after 8 hours. The scuba rule has to do with the bends as all flight has a pressure altitude above sea level. Blood will start outgassing dissolved nitrogen at altitude (or cabin pressure). --DHeyward (talk) 19:48, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm...the scuba rule makes perfect sense - but shouldn't it also be applied to passengers? At least it should be really well publicised. SteveBaker (talk) 19:59, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

That is likely true, but it may be that the risk of "bends" 24 hours is small but not zero, and that the amount of discomfort to be expected may not be a health risk to a passenger, but is a safety risk to the aircraft and its passengers. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:20, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It needn't be publicized by the airlines as it is stressed during recreational diver training as an important rule to follow to avoid DCS. Many dive resort arrange land-based activities and tours for the last day of a dive vacation. A "Time to Fly" countdown is indicated on most dive computers, with some simply using a 24 hour countdown, while others calculate a safe time to fly based on actual nitrogen absorption and off-gassing calculations . -- ToE 14:43, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

"I don't understand how you could have any alcohol in your system 8+ hours after drinking any, unless you were so badly drunk as to be in a medical emergency" is completely silly, for any definition of medical emergency that makes sense. Greglocock (talk) 23:39, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I completely agree. It's quite common for people to assume that after a night of partying, they can sleep for 8 hours and then safely drive home...for sure, that's not guaranteed to be the case. It's easily possible for there to be a legally unacceptable blood-alcohol level present, even 8 hours later. The (very approximate) rule of 1 unit of alcohol being removed from your bloodstream per hour and 2 units being an unsafe level to drive with tells you that after 10 drinks, 8 hours ain't enough to get you sufficiently sober to drive a car. But that number is an exceedingly approximate rule of thumb...and plenty of individuals will metabolize the alcohol more slowly than that. Also, the presence of food in the stomach while drinking, avoiding fizzy drinks and staying clear of artificial sweeteners are all well known tricks to avoid getting drunk too quickly - but all they are really doing is slowing down the absorption rate - which makes the likelyhood that you're still over the limit the next morning much higher. This is a complex biological system - and these simple rules are really seriously wrong for some kinds of people in some kinds of situation.

I also believe that even if the alcohol has indeed been metabolized away after 8 hours, a severe hangover is every bit as big an impairment to good driving/flying as being mildly intoxicated...so the hours-since-last-drink rule is good for that reason also. SteveBaker (talk) 17:10, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Heavy water

In the so called heavy water plants around the world, is heavy water manufactured or just separated from a lot of ordinary water. The article is not clear about this.--86.176.8.21 (talk) 16:15, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I am not entirely sure what you mean. It is made from various treatments of "normal" water (and various other chemicals may be involved); it is not made of thin air! Is that 'manufacturing'? I do not know. Everything comes from some form of raw materials; in this case, the raw material is indeed mostly water. So yes... heavy water is mostly made from water. Whether you consider it 'extracted' or not is moot. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 16:28, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It could indeed be made from air, by combining oxygen from the air with heavy hydrogen, which while rare in the air, is present at some level. However, I think it is extracted from water, by just separating it, using a series of centrifuges, since heavy water is a bit heavier, as the name implies. StuRat (talk) 16:37, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

[edit conflict] There's a small amount of heavy water in ordinary water, so maybe it's extractable, but it may also be possible to force some weird chemical reaction to convert ordinary water into heavy water. This is the distinction between "manufactured or just separated". Conversely, you could perhaps synthesise it from thin air; water vapour is in the atmosphere, so you'd just need to run a dehydrator machine and use its water for the weird chemical reaction. Nyttend (talk) 16:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Well separation by the kinetic isotope effect usually using the Girdler sulfide process is a chemical way to obtain heavy water, but ordinary water cannot be converted to heavy water by any chemical reaction any more than lead can be converted to gold by chemistry. Creation of heavy water from normal water (or normal oxygen and hydrogen) would require a physical process but is not practicable in significant quantities, just as creating gold is not practicable. Nearly all deuterium that exists was created in Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Dbfirs 17:18, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It's produced by distillation, typically with the assistance of chemical processes. Details here and here. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:27, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Initially, (late 1930's) the only source of heavy-water was by separating naturally occurring DiDeuterium monoxide (heavy-water) from ordinary water. As there is little in ordinary water, this extraction process was very expensive. With the development of nuclear reactors, ordinary water could be subjected to a high neutron flux in the reactor so that the hydrogen nucleus had a chance of capturing a neutron. They do this all too readily, which is why ordinary water is not much good as a moderator, since the water soaks up the free neutrons, leaving few for the continuation of a chain reaction (OK, this is a bit more involved than that but that is a subject for a separate question). If the resulting heavy-water so produced, is then concentrated to make it suitable as a moderator in a heavy-water reactor, some of those heavy deuterium atoms may then absorb another neutron and they becomes tritium atoms. Those tritium atoms can then can be separated off and used for such applications as beta lights and boosters for thermonuclear devices. --Aspro (talk) 17:51, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I thought that bombardment with neutrons would work, but I couldn't find evidence of it actually being used to produce heavy water. I guess that it's just an expensive way to do it compared with the chemical separation process that I mentioned above, since normal water is less common in reactors these days. Dbfirs 18:09, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, to produce heavy water in quantity, then the processes you link to is the only economic way to do so. The Germans in the late 1930's used electrolysis with potassium hydroxide as the electrolyte. By all accounts it was not very productive compared with more modern methods.--Aspro (talk) 20:28, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

As the previous posters have said, "manufacturing" of heavy water in the sense of the production of deuterium would require a nuclear reaction, not a chemical reaction. Deuterium can be isotopically extracted from protium either in the form of water or in the form of the gas. I am not aware of any practical efforts to create deuterium. It is extracted, either as the gas or as water. Given that water is abundant and the gas is flammable and has to be obtained itself from water, I think that water is the better starting point. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:13, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Isotopic Separation and Enrichment goes into deuterium and other other isotopes separation methods used in industry and adds some interesting background.--Aspro (talk) 20:38, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the interesting link. Would you like to use that document to expand our article on the Girdler sulfide process? Dbfirs 20:53, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Someone else may. I fear I am spreading my free-time over too many areas already and I have a growing list of WP articles that need complete re-writes. Just can't find enough quality time to tackle them properly. There may be better sources too (I just Googled: potassium, Germans, Telemark, electrolysis and that pop out. The inclusion there of the Girdler sulfide process was just a serendipitous coincidence. ). A Boolean search may be more productive.--Aspro (talk) 22:19, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Does lemon juice dissolve polystyrene foam ?

I filled a polystyrene foam (commonly called Styrofoam) cup with lemons and water (no sugar), left it in the fridge for a couple days, and found the polystyrene foam on the inside, below the water line, was heavily eaten away. Was this a defective cup, or would they all do this ? StuRat (talk) 20:08, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, in the UK, these cups are not supposed to be used with any acidic lemon drink because of this problem. Dbfirs 20:35, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the hydrocarbon chains in polystyrene should be broken by acid. Far more likely is that some oil in the lemon peel ended up in the lemonade, and dissolved the polystyrene wherever it touched the cup. This is the reason why only the region just under the water line was affected - because the lemon oil is lighter than the lemonade, so it floats on top. Wnt (talk) 20:53, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for the correction, it's not the acid but the lemon oil that's the problem. Dbfirs 21:00, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

How sure are you that the cup was polystyrene and not some other more environmentally friendly biodegradable alternative? SteveBaker (talk) 23:09, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It was white, if that helps. In any case, the lemon oil/polystyrene interaction seems likely to be the explanation. Thanks, all. StuRat (talk) 17:23, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Humans are more closely related to cows/pigs/sheep than parrots are to chickens?

Is this true or false? It's a factoid I've seen quoted a few times in relation to discussions of whether a parrot eating some chicken is an example of cannibalism (which it obviously isn't, yet a lot of people seem to disagree) and therefore morally wrong. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 21:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You'd have to decide on a way to measure the differences. Percent DNA in common ? Time since the last common ancestor ? It seems quite possibly true to me, either way. StuRat (talk) 21:52, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Either way will be fine - whichever one is possible to answer... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:03, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Morality is a human invention. It applies only to human behavior, not to animal behavior. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:57, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Haha. Try telling that to some parrot owners! :) --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:03, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

In the case of a parrot eating a chicken, I would think it would be the chicken's owner complaining about cannibalism. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:07, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

By any measure, humans are much more closely related to their fellow mammals cows, pigs and sheep than any of those are to birds. Humans are in the same phylogenetic magnorder as the other placential mammals mentioned, whereas they are in the same phylogenetic superclass as birds. The Synapsids (the reptilian ancestors of mammals) diverged from the sauropsids (the reptilian ancestors of modern reptiles and birds) some 325 million years ago, about 90 million years before dinosaurs appreared. The line leading to humans diverged from the line leading to cows, pigs and sheep a lot more recently, within the last 65 million years, after the dinosaurs (except for the birds) had gone extinct. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:27, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I think you misread the Q, which asked about how closely parrots and chickens are related to each other. StuRat (talk) 22:32, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I see. Then the answer is that the ancestors of humans diverged from those of cows, pigs and sheep at about the same time as the ancestors of parrots diverged from those of chickens, that is, about 65 million years ago, give or take a million years or two. Parrots and chickens are not particularly closely related members of the bird order. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Nope - good try. Like mammals, birds diversified tremendously after the asteroid hit the Yucatan... but Galloanseres diverged from Neoaves much earlier, 90 million years ago. There has just been some spectacular action on this front - see [3]. Wnt (talk) 23:04, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

• The most recent ancestor of parrots and chickens is the common ancestor of Neognathae. The most common ancestor of primates and pigs is the Boreotheria, which links the Euarchonta to the Cetartiodactyla. Both deeper groups predate the KT boundary. Let us know if reading these articles is not helpful. μηδείς (talk) 04:25, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

From the figure published for the bird genome poject, the most recent common ancestor of parrots and galliformes (chickens etc.) is put around 90 million years ago, our Euarchontoglires article says they probably split from the Laurasiatheria sister group about 85 to 95 million years ago, so the same ballpark. However, falcons and parrots have a more recent common ancestor, so by this rather peculiar moral measure, a falcon eating a parrot is almost as much cannibalism as, say, a human eating a rabbit. [confirmation of dates needed]. . . dave souza, talk 10:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Falcons and (parrots and songbirds) split shortly after the KT event (see Nat Geo summary of recent article), While primates and glires (rabbits and rodents) split well before. μηδείς (talk) 17:29, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure why, but there really does seem to be a belief that a bird eating another bird or a bird eating the eggs of another species is an act of cannibalism. I've seen it cause arguments in the comments of YouTube videos. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 16:01, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

The reason is that we can distinguish features better on things more similar to us. This is the same reason why a starfish is called that, despite it being about as far from a fish as is possible for any animal. Nobody would ever mistake a human for a chimp, yet a dolphin or porpoise could easily be confused, as could an alligator or crocodile. Even people of different races are sometimes hard for us to distinguish. StuRat (talk) 17:17, 29 December 2014 (UTC)