Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2015 October 3

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October 3

Does this Swiffer WetJet refill[1] contain polyacrylates?

I asked a question above, Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Using_disposable_diapers_as_paper_towels, and Jayron helpfully pointed me to exactly what I need. Now I just need some reliable sources to confirm that this refill [2] does indeed contain polyacrylates before going out and buying it. 731Butai (talk) 04:56, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Didn't find any info regarding it's composition, sorry... Ssscienccce (talk) 14:19, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Foreign common names of new species

Who typically gives foreign-language (non-Latin) common names of newly described species of animals and plants (excluding literal translations)? --93.174.25.12 (talk) 09:16, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're going for, but the answer might be "nobody". Not every species described has a common name at all, let along one for every language. Many only have their Latin binomial nomenclature. Consider, for example, dinosaurs, which are typically only known by their Latin name - and the general populace usually only uses the Genus. 99.235.223.170 (talk) 13:09, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

By new species I mean not only recent ones, but those described back in 1700s, 1800s and 1990s when they were new. 93.174.25.12 (talk) 16:10, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

The original penguin was not a penguin.

Common names, unlike scientific names, do not follow rules. There are no formal organizations who give each new species a new common name in each language upon discovery. It depends on what people prefer to call them which is then what authors follow, or vice versa. Usually authors will try to preserve the original name given by the original discoverer with minor changes depending on differences in language (though in quite a lot of cases, the changes may also be due to errors). However, they may choose to use a different name if the organism becomes more widely known by another name in their native language. Or they may just change it because it sounded better in their ears, because it reminded them of something else native to their country, or just for the heck of it. There are no conventions.

Your question is more than a little confusing though, so if that's not what you meant then here are other possible answers:

If you mean the origin of common names coined upon discovery for organisms previously unknown to the western world that isn't derived from major European languages: those usually originated from badly pronounced/misheard/misspelled native names in their area of origin. Which can be blamed on explorers, naturalists, and authors.

Kangaroo for example, is from the Guugu Yimithirr word gangurru, which was in turn mispronounced as "kanguru" by the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks (who was part of James Cook's first voyage). Another example is cougar, which is believed to be ultimately from Tupi-Guarani guaçu ara, spelled by the English naturalist John Ray as cuguacu ara, which was abbreviated by the French naturalist Georges Buffon to couguar (influenced by the already existing French word jaguar, also believed to be derived from Tupi-Guarani), before finally being borrowed by English again as "cougar".

Names might not even refer to the organisms originally (or may mean something completely different from what the explorers thought they meant). For example "panda", today more commonly associated with the giant panda, is thought to have originally been from Nepali pónya, which referred to the red panda (subsequently discovered to be unrelated to giant pandas). "Penguin" (thought to be from Welsh pengwynn) originally referred exclusively to the great auk. But then the latter went extinct and the name was transferred by popular usage to the penguins, which looked similar and were also flightless, but were otherwise not closely related.

Relatively modern discoveries generally retain the native name of the organism more or less accurately. Though the spelling may be Anglicized. For example, the saola (from Vietnames sao la) and kea (from Maori kea). Native names may also become more prevalent than their traditional English equivalents in time. Especially if the name is shorter, easier to pronounce, and/or less ambiguous. For example nilgai (from Hindi nilgai) instead of "blue bull", binturong (from Malay binturong) instead of "bearcat", and moose (from Algonquian mus or moos) instead of "elk" (which is also used for wapiti, a different species), and coyote (from Nahuatl (Aztec) coyotl) instead of "American jackal", etc.

If you meant common name regulation after discovery, there have been attempts to formalize common names by scientists in an effort to reduce confusion; but they're generally only used in scientific literature (as in the case of butterflies and birds, see Birds of the World: Recommended English Names), seldom affect common usage, and only apply locally to a language/region. National governments may also regulate common names by law when it comes to commercially important species (e.g. fishing and timber industries). But again, these happen long after the species have been discovered/described.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 07:04, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

does sugar convert into body fat

linking to process if answer is affirmative would be nice bonus — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahfuzur rahman shourov (talk • contribs) 15:48, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Homo sapiens and other Homo's had to live thorough the lean time of the year when food was short. Any carbohydrates like sugars needed to be turned into to fat to provided a energy source during the lean times. The paleolithic diet had little energy rich foods, so any sugars got converted into fat. Today, we have too much sugar, carbohydrates and fats, yet our bodies keep turning it to fat, The western populations are becoming morbidly obese now as there are no longer any lean times to burn off that fat. So we get fatter, fatter and fatter and need triply bypass surgery --Aspro (talk) 16:13, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

These metabolic processes make up much of what is called a "biochemistry" course, but I think you can make some sense of them.

Glycolysis converts glucose to pyruvate. Glucose is a simple sugar found in grapes and a few things like that; usually it has to be converted from other sugars like sucrose - I can go into that more if you want, but it's not a central issue. Anyway, glucose is the body's version of "sugar", as in blood sugar etc., and that's where it starts. For some reason our treatment (and others) of glycolysis doesn't go all the way to acetyl CoA - to get that last pyruvate into acetyl-CoA step in we need to consider pyruvate dehydrogenase separately. That enzyme is tripped by insulin, which tells the body it has taken in carbohydrate food and should do something with it. The acetyl-CoA can go to energy via the citric acid cycle, but since we're talking fat here we want lipogenesis instead. It's a biochemical (and behavioral) crossroads. Lipogenesis should explain the rest of what you want. Shout out if you run into trouble. Wnt (talk) 16:27, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

And when the body gets more carbohydrate foods than it knows what to to with (in a modern diet), the insulin feed-back system brakes down... But no fear, modern science is here. Quacks Doctors can proscribe expensive drugs to enable one to carry on eating a bad diet for the rest of the very short life one has left on our (or your) 21st Century diet. The quacks MD's can just bury or cremate their mistakes when it comes to treating patients with obesity.--Aspro (talk) 17:07, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I think you're getting off topic. Everyone has fat (well, except maybe Lizzie Velasquez) and everyone converts extra carbs to fat now and then. The health record of obesity is not so bad compared to cancerettes, artificial fats, and maybe some other fine upstanding industries we don't know about yet. Wnt (talk) 22:16, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

MDs generally treat diseases, there are dietitians (nutritionists) who take care of one's diet. As prof. dr. Martijn B. Katan said, generally MDs don't know much about nutrition (medicine and nutrition are different specialisms). Besides, as long as eating what you like remains a right, there is little what MDs and dietitians could do in order to change the obesity epidemic. There are commercial regulations which have reduced fats from many products, but they tasted worse, so producers have replaces fats with sugars. In general, if you eat more calories than you burn, you will store extra fat. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:21, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

We're still off topic, but the recent word seems to be that fat actually is not unhealthy to eat, provided it didn't come out of a chemical vat where vegetable oil was processed at hotter-than-oven temperatures over a platinum catalyst to make it look like imitation lard. Wnt (talk) 22:31, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

• Coming back to the question then. Yes sugars get turned into fat. I am very wary about linking to a commercial web site but this one has it right. Read and enjoy. [3]--Aspro (talk) 23:03, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Mass–energy equivalence on macro scale

Is it true that mass–energy equivalence only works on micro scale, but not macro scale, when, for example, you cannot directly convert your own energy into something tangible with mass? I mean conversion of energy to mass only, not backwards as in the case of atomic bombs, etc. 93.174.25.12 (talk) 17:22, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Mass-energy equivalence means that mass and energy are the same thing; it is two words with one meaning, not different things you can convert between. People sometimes use the words narrowly to mean things you might be able to convert between, such as photons ("energy") and a mixture of matter and antimatter at rest ("mass"). I'm not sure what someone would mean by saying that equivalence/conversion wouldn't work on the macro scale. There's no size limitation. As a practical matter it's impossible to assemble a cup of hot Earl Grey tea from electrons and nucleons, much less from electricity, but that isn't the fault of mass-energy equivalence. -- BenRG (talk) 18:05, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Saying that they are "two words with one meaning" goes too far. Ice and steam are two words for forms of H2O, and conditions exist where they are indistinguishable, but that doesn't make them "words with the same meaning". --174.88.134.156 (talk) 20:53, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

No, mass and energy really are the exact same thing. You may be thinking of matter versus energy. Someguy1221 (talk) 21:31, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Note that our technology is far more effective at converting mass into energy than energy into mass. Any nuclear reactor does the first, although antimatter far more efficiently converts into energy. StuRat (talk) 19:49, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes. But could you provide an example when energy is directly converted into something tangible? 93.174.25.12 (talk) 20:52, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Any endothermic reaction (be it chemical or nuclear) uses energy (typically thermal or kinetic energy) to convert reactants of one mass to products of a higher mass. The difference may be undetectable, but this very much works on a macro level. Or rather, it's working on the level of individual atoms or molecules, but even in very large collections of them. Someguy1221 (talk) 21:31, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, for a given set of atoms, you can vary the rest mass by changing the chemical composition, but the difference between minimum and maximum rest mass is minute, and you can't get above that maximum. Seems that the OP is talking about turning energy into new rest mass: starting with energy and no rest mass, ending with rest mass and no energy. And that can't be done, that's why it's called invariant mass. Ssscienccce (talk) 03:29, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

True, but the OP asked if something tangible with mass can be created with one's energy and all of that energy is collectively at rest (in their reference frame). He did ask if it can be done directly, so this is a bit of a stretch since it's significantly indirect, but to create new matter from one's own energy one can run a treadmill electric generator and/or invest in low-temperature Sterling engines that transfers some of their energy into a capacitor bank that then energizes a desktop particle accelerator and its laser, then with two-photon physics, inverse Compton scattering of a laser beam with an electron beam can produce charged fermion-antifermion pairs. The Texas Petawatt Laser can currently deliver up to 190 Joules per shot per hour. [4] -Modocc (talk) 18:25, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Or energize this antimatter 'gun' built by University of Michigan researchers. -Modocc (talk) 03:44, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

The short, sweet answer to the OP's question is our article on pair production, which says:

"For photons at high-energy, (MeV scale and higher) pair production is the dominant mode of photon interaction with matter. These interactions were first observed in Patrick Blackett's counter-controlled cloud chamber, leading to the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics. If the photon is near an atomic nucleus, the energy of a photon can be converted into an electron-positron pair:

γ → e− + e+

The photon's energy is converted to particle's mass through Einstein’s equation, E=mc2; where E is energy, m is mass and c is the speed of light. The photon must have higher energy than the sum of the rest mass energies of an electron and positron (2 * 0.511 MeV = 1.022 MeV) for the production to occur. The photon must be near a nucleus in order to satisfy conservation of momentum, as an electron-positron pair producing in free space cannot both satisfy conservation of energy and momentum.[1] Because of this, when pair production occurs, the atomic nucleus receives some recoil. The reverse of this process is electron positron annihilation."

So, photons are constantly passing near atomic nuclei. When this happens, pairs of electrons and positrons are constantly produced. And usually annihilated shortly thereafter, with the creation of recoil energy. But very briefly, yes, new rest mass is generated.

At the supernova and black hole stage, Stephen Hawking has theorized that positron-electron pairs created in pair production are wrenched apart, so that singlets from these pairs can exist - a rare instance in which photons (energy) are turned into rest mass with more than momentary existence. loupgarous (talk) 14:31, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

New particles with rest mass are created (which answers the OP's question regarding mass-energy equivalence), but rest mass is not and cannot be created. For example, one photon by itself is massless, but if another photon approaches it then the two photon system has invariant rest mass that will be constant before, during, and after their brief interaction and the same is true when photons approach and interact with massive nuclei; the quantity of rest mass present is unchanged. It's a conserved quantity. -Modocc (talk) 17:01, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

List of equipments/machines that exerts 'outward air pressure' in order to fly/move

E.g., Helicoptor, aeroplane, they require 'inward air pressure' in order to move...excluding man made 'spaceships' and or 'rockets'. -- Space Ghost (talk) 19:17, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Helicopters and aeroplanes do not require "inward pressure". Rather, they work from a differential pressure across the aerofoil. SpinningSpark 19:22, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. I can't think of an airborne vehicle, other than a rocket, which doesn't use variable air pressure to move. A prop increases the pressure behind it and decreases the air pressure in front, for example. Even though used on spacecraft, an ion engine might be of interest, being quite a different way of achieving thrust. StuRat (talk) 19:44, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks buddy. I'll definitely look through it in the time to come. -- Space Ghost (talk) 18:58, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Definitionally, pressure is a physical property of a fluid that does not have a direction. There is no such thing as "inward" or "outward" direction of pressure. Pressure is isotropic. Quoting our article:

“ It is incorrect (although rather usual) to say "the pressure is directed in such or such direction". The pressure, as a scalar, has no direction. The force given by the previous relationship to the quantity has a direction, but the pressure does not. If we change the orientation of the surface element, the direction of the normal force changes accordingly, but the pressure remains the same. ”

So, ... this question cannot be answered until we correct our OP's misunderstanding about the way pressure actually works. Can you rephrase what you meant?

Nimur (talk) 20:25, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, people often use the term "pressure" when they really mean "pressure gradient" or the like. Usually the meaning is obvious from the context but in this case it's a not clear. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:44, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I assume the OP didn't literally mean "inward pressure", since he used quotation marks. Planes and helicopters use air "sucked" inward, rockets don't, so that could be what he refers to (maybe something more like a paddle steamer than a ship with propeller?). In any case, there aren't many ways to fly, jetpacks are also a type of rocket, that leaves only balloons I think? Ssscienccce (talk) 02:17, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Airplanes fly because they produce lift that is greater than (or equal to) their weight. The Airplane Flying Handbook defines lift as "an upward force created by the effect of airflow as it passes over and under the wing." Reputable sources do not usually describe this process as "suction." Nimur (talk) 05:19, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

• Lift doesn't move them forward, though. —Tamfang (talk) 20:13, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, I was talking about the engines, not the wings. Ssscienccce (talk) 03:57, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Okay, basically, there are no such thing that excretes 'air flow' in order to move except propeller/rockets.

Q:

1. Is the power of suction greater than the power of its excretion? If not, what ways could we possibly make an object move without a suction excluding a propeller/rocket? - I was thinking of what Ssscienccce stated (something alike), the problem rested upon, where would the excretion of the air flow go to? Will it lift its body? How high? Can the suction stay covered so the ouward air flow does the movement trick...?
2. When you stand underneath a helicopter, do you feel hot/cold air flowing down the blades?

Space Ghost (talk) 18:58, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

A prop engine should increase the pressure behind the prop as much as it decreased the pressure in front of the prop. A jet engine should increase the pressure more behind the engine because the fuel combustion adds to the pressure. StuRat (talk) 20:31, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

It makes sense now to me - I did not understand at first when you used the words 'increase' and decrease' for the prop... Thanks. -- Space Ghost (talk) 21:45, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Bernoulli's principle accounts for flight in the atmosphere. Birds' feathers, insects' wings, paper airplanes and the top surfaces of helicopter rotors or aeroplane wings (including [gliders], which HAVE no engines) ALL depend on Bernoulli's principle to create upward lift (and thus flight). And the cause isn't "outward air pressure," but "reduced air pressure" above a wing of some sort. That "reduced air pressure" above the wing causes it to rise because air pressure under the wing lifts it.

Gliders, paper airplanes, and some trees' seeds all take advantage of lift caused by Bernoulli's principle to lift them through the air without an engine. While a glider generally needs a powered vehicle towing it until it reaches the airspeed at which its wings supply lift, hang gliders simply fall until their wings begin lifting them and their operator, with no engine involved.

The point I'm making is that the air blown through prop or jet engine mostly supplies forward impulse to the aircraft to move it fast enough that the wing begins lifting it.

Helicopters simply place the wing surface on their rotors, so that upward lift combines with increased downward air pressure under the helicopter rotor - rotor wash - to lift the comparatively narrow wings called "helicopter rotors", and thus the helicopter itself.

But a fixed-wing aircraft is lifted, not by air pressure from its engines, but by the difference in the air pressure over and under its wings. It's pushed forward through the air by the prop wash or jet wash from those engines rapidly enough that its wings can lift it. loupgarous (talk) 15:01, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Nimur stated what you stated in a way. To be honest, the logic should've been the engines. Anyway, I understand, I guess the craft's 'speed' and the 'wings-makings' needs to be collaborated accordingly.

Nimur and you stated this, the only thing I remember is that, a spaceship turns upside down/faces its belly towards the Sun during its flight/travel. I have not seen a plane lift of as its getting off the ground unless the wings flaps were moved upwards - probably due to the speed it takes off...

Space Ghost (talk) 20:08, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Strange beetle

I have just found a strange beetle... alive in oil! It was probably in there for 9 hours. How did it survive and what is it?Megaraptor12345 (talk) 19:41, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Either it must have been able to breath air (which insects generally do through their skin) or perhaps it was able to go dormant and then escape and start breathing again. We will need a pic to identify it. StuRat (talk) 19:46, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

How would I get a pic up? Megaraptor12345 (talk) 20:22, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

At the top of the page, on the left side, there's an "upload file" link. Once you upload the image file, you can list the file name here and we will be able to view it. (They will ask you if you have a license, if you took the pic yourself just say "this is my own work".) StuRat (talk) 22:16, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Do people who have more visible eye area really have bigger eyes?

My question relates to how some people who appear to have bigger eyes (like Mila Kunis) when facing directly at them, but when taking in factors such as protrusion of the supra-orbital notch, amount fat around epicanthis, skin fold are, eye socket volume; I wondered if there was an actual disparity between the actual eyes' volume compared from those who have "big eyes" (Mila Kunis) and those with "small eyes" (Clint Eastwood).

Mila Kunis Eyes

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/619035436191752192/CgHDdi2s.jpg

Clint Eatwood

http://cp91279.biography.com/1000509261001/1000509261001_1822734097001_Biography-24-Hollywood-Directors-Clint-Eastwood-SF.jpg

Does this make sense? Clint Eastwood appears to have smaller eyes than Kunis, but when considering the factors above or others that alter the perception of eye size, can he actually have an eye size similar to Kunis? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.73.143.162 (talk) 20:00, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

There's this study: "Variations in Eyeball Diameters of the Healthy Adults" (Bekerman et al., 2014). I quote: "The size of an emmetropic human adult eye is approximately 24.2 mm (transverse, horizontal) × 23.7 mm (sagittal, vertical) × 22.0–24.8 mm (axial, anteroposterior) with no significant difference between sexes and age groups. In the transverse diameter, the eyeball size may vary from 21 mm to 27 mm. Myopia and hypermetropia change the axial diameter significantly that can vary from 20 to 26 mm." Dunno about Kunis and Eastwood. There may be variation there, but it's also important to note that Eastwood is squinting and has heavier bone structure, being male. Those also affect perception of eye size relative to the face. -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 23:08, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

why does the nasa needs intelligent persons ? (I mean with high Iq´s)

I have seen a video of the 20 most intelligent persons on earth, quiet everybody is working or was working for the Nasa. And I remember that this one guy in the big bang theory is also working for the Nasa. Why do they need this persons? Does an Astronaut / Kosmonaut has to be intelligent? Do I need an IQ over 150 to be able to drive the mars rover? or what exactly is done with this persons--Poker chip (talk) 20:40, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

In this context IQ is a bit misleading. In broad numbers: Only about one in twenty people can lead others (i.e. they are dominate), (think PHB). Only about one in twenty of those have both that and an intellectual capacity to see through and understand the real issues. Out of those there are only a few that also have the background knowledge in a field of science that NASA needs. That whittles the population of the US down to a few thousand. It is a privilege to work for NASA or JET so these organizations can choose the most able ( must be difficult when one's daughter bring home her long hired boyfriend for the first time: '”Umm. so I've told you that I sell second hand autos.. so what do you do?” “Oh shucks, I don't know even how to drive - I'm just a rocket scientist!”) Yet, these people by their very nature are just good at IQ tests. You can practice and improve your score. But whether that qualifies you to drive the Mars Rover is a different issue entirely. My IQ scores have always been high – but I don't think I have the right background to drive a Rover – I would probable end up with a traffic violation ticket on the very first day.--Aspro (talk) 21:49, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

NASA does not use IQ tests as any part of their application process for ordinary career tracks or for the astronaut selection process. Consider reading Careers @ NASA for an introduction to the opportunities they have available, and for the criteria they use. A degree in a science or engineering discipline from an accredited university is among the first requirements for the more competitive positions. A strong command of the English language, in its spoken and written form, is also a prerequisite. The astronaut corps is not presently open to new candidates and has not accepted new applications since c. 2012. The United States does not presently operate any spacecraft capable of launching new manned spaceflight missions, and NASA is not actively recruiting or training new astronauts. Perhaps this status may change in the future.

Nimur (talk) 21:56, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

See what I mean: “A strong command of the English language, in its spoken and written form, is also a prerequisite.” that alone would disbar me from driving a Cape Canaveral Segway even with my IQ --Aspro (talk) 22:18, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I'd say it comes down to the small number of units of each spaceship, rocket, rover, etc., they produce. This means a huge effort and brainpower is needed to design and test all those new devices. It's not like at a car company, where, once the design is completed, they produce a million of them, and little thought is required for building them. I'd actually like to see NASA and it's suppliers get more into a mass production mode.

For example, for Mars exploration, once they design an unmanned ship to deliver supplies for a future manned mission, instead of redesigning each iteration, they should just keep sending the same design, unless they identify a specific design flaw. Or, for a present example, the Mars Opportunity (rover) is still operational after over a decade, so they should build and launch 100 exactly like that, which would bring down the per-unit costs dramatically and allow for massive exploration of Mars' surface. StuRat (talk) 22:10, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

"Why can't (don't?) we mass produce space probes?" was asked on the Science desk in 2011. The cost of engineering and manufacturing a space probe is not the most significant contribution to the total operating cost. Nimur (talk) 22:15, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

That's not how I read it. The costs were listed as "approximately $820 million total, consisting approximately of $645 million spacecraft development and science instruments; $100 million launch; $75 million mission operations and science processing". So, that $645 can be essentially eliminated on the repeat runs. The remaining $175 million can probably also be reduced, by economy of scale, on repeats. For example, a lot of that was probably spent on hiring people, training them, building launch and operations facilities, etc. If the same people can be used for subsequent launches, and the same facilities, that should save money. Or, where new facilities are needed, we already have the designs, so those can just be cloned. StuRat (talk) 22:22, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Every rover is an experiment. So that its prodigy that follows in it tracks can do even better science, based on the lessons learnt from the former probes.--Aspro (talk) 22:37, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that's how NASA currently thinks, which results in very few rovers at very high expense each. StuRat (talk) 02:38, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

To get back to the original question, no, you don't need a high IQ to drive a Mars rover but that's not all the astronauts are doing. Most of them are specialists in some discipline such as geology so they can investigate what they find there. However, I would expect that the most intelligent people at NASA are the ones who work out how to build the space probes and get them to rendezvous with and land safely on another planet in the first place. There is a lot of complicated science involved in working all that out. Also, as someone has said already if you have a job that lots of people want to do then you can select from the very best applicants with the highest qualifications. Richerman (talk) 10:14, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

• You talk as if space agencies don't use this strategy. Lots of spacecraft are made on the assembly line – telecoms satellites, weather satellites, crew transfer capsules, spy satellites (all spacecraft where having dozens of identical designs are useful) – and many more use the same basic designs with improved instruments (eg the Landsat program). The savings of the assembly line model don't seem to be as great as you think. The Iridium NEXT constellation – 66 telecom satellites in low Earth Orbit – is set to cost about $2.9 billion ($44 million per satellite), which is comparable to ESA's one-off Cosmic Vision#Small class missions (€50 million) and only a bit cheaper than NASA's Small Explorer program ($120 million, including control and data analysis costs). Even interplanetary missions build on previous ones; the European Space Agency uses the assembly line model (Mars Express, Venus Express and Rosetta are all the same chassis, with a few modifications to suit each target), and both the United States and the Soviet Union historically used it (for instance, the Lunar Orbiter program and Luna programme respectively, at the time of the space race when simply throwing anything into space scored you political points), but the law of diminishing returns comes into play. Two Hubbles wouldn't tell us much more than one did, and the benefit of having two Vikings and two Mars Exploration Rovers was more that that they could back each other up (although they landed in different places, they didn't find radical differences). It's very unlikely that another 98 Opportunities would give very much more benefit – especially given that NASA funding is reliant on maintaining public interest (look how quickly people got bored of the Apollo program). Smurrayinchester 09:23, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

• 120 versus 44 million is a huge difference, allowing 3 times as many missions at the same cost. You have a point about needing to maintain public interest, but substantially new designs are far more likely to fail, and this really calls NASA funding into question. More missions are also more likely to find something of interest to the public. And yes, more commercial enterprises, like weather and communications sats, do tend to be more along the production model, in order to be more efficient. NASA would do well to emulate that model, so they can be more efficient, too. Specifically, sending pre-supply modules to Mars for a later manned mission is one place where the assembly line model would work well. StuRat (talk) 16:29, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

The list you saw is certainly bogus. As far as I know, most high-achieving people have never taken an IQ test. Those that have would (at least if they're scientifically trained) understand that the score they got is no more an intrinsic quality of themselves than any other test score. They would also know which of the various proctored tests that are called "IQ tests" they actually took, and when. If they reported their score, they would report it as a score on a specific test, not as "their IQ". If you see a list of smart people with an IQ listed for each, most if not all of the scores are made up. People invent bogus IQ scores for famous figures all the time. The lists are just a selection of the author's favorite celebrities who have a reputation for intelligence. I'm pretty sure that NASA does not snap up a large fraction of the world's smartest people, so if a list contains a large number of NASA employees, that just reflects the author's bias. -- BenRG (talk) 17:28, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Generally, I think BenRG's comments are on the mark. One comment: BenRG states that few people have ever taken an IQ test, and this is a sticky statement that depends on how restrictively we define "IQ." Many educated people, especially in the United States, have taken the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). This test has been called an IQ test, or at least an "intelligence test." For example, here's a 2011 article from New York Times, The SAT Is a Good Intelligence Test, in which a professor of psychology says "Scores on the SAT correlate very highly with scores on standardized tests of intelligence, and like IQ scores, are stable across time and not easily increased through training, coaching or practice." On the other hand, here's a critique from NPR's 1999 Frontline documentary, Secrets of the SAT, in which the editor of Princeton Review addresses the question even more directly: "Is the SAT an IQ test? No." ... and then expounds by saying: "Because it doesn't measure IQ. It is used that way. And it was developed from the army IQ test. But even the College Board will refuse to say that this is an intelligence test. ... It does correlate extremely highly with an IQ test. It was developed from the army IQ test..."

So, it seems that experts do not want to call an SAT an IQ test. Nor will they use the term "IQ" to describe the results of the ACT (test), the Graduate Record Examination, the ASVAB, the MCAT, the LSAT, or any of the other famous psychometric tests that nearly every formally-educated English-speaker took prior to admission into higher education. However, every one of these test scores strongly correlates with "IQ" when independently studied in control-groups.

For most practical purposes, you can call a well-designed, proctored, standardized test like SAT an "intelligence test." Some experts will disagree with that designation. If you're speaking among psychometrics and psychology experts, you might also add the caveat that an "intelligence test" is distinct from an "IQ test." If you intend to use standardized test scores as a predictor, or as an admission/hiring criteria, you would do well to study how the specific tests work, what they measure, and develop a deep understanding of the methodology involved. Most people would rather not spend the effort to understand such subtleties.

Again, it is worth emphasizing that NASA does not use any of these standardized tests as a part of their standard career selection process. Even more specifically, the Office of Personnel Management (the office that broadly manages the "HR" personnel policy for the entire Federal civil service) cautions that some types of assessment testing constitute a medical examination and therefore violate Government hiring guidelines for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Welcome to Government work, enthusiastic future NASA initiates!)

Finally, I think it is worth re-linking to Careers @ NASA, the landing page for NASA job seekers. It seems that several earlier respondents misunderstand what NASA does. It is exceptionally rare for a career NASA employee to be involved in the design or operation of spacecraft, especially in this decade. If you wish to be involved in the design and operation of spaceflight vehicles, you stand a greater chance of accomplishing that goal by pursuing a career as an engineer in the private sector, seeking employment with one of the contractors who design and deliver space flight vehicles. NASA administers programs related to space flight, space science, earth science, and so on; but NASA does not execute these programs.

Nimur (talk) 20:59, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid that even with my IQ I can't understand what the hell your getting at.--Aspro (talk) 20:44, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

He means that NASA consists more of managers and bureaucrats than of scientists and engineers (that is, if they are actually scientists or engineers they mostly do management or bureaucratic work). Also, he says, taking IQ tests could be seen as violating Government hiring guidelines. If you mean what BenRG wrote, IQ scores for celebrities are often made up. Tgeorgescu (talk) 02:46, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Your understanding of how science works isn't complete - and it's very incomplete concerning your fixation on NASA.

IQ is an abstract measure of intelligence which does not drive scientific achievement. Basically, to be a scientist, you have to be able to observe the world around you - a very specialized form of intelligence only sketchily captured on IQ tests. If you can simply see what's going on during an experiment you have a crucial skill some NASA researchers seem to have lacked over the years - the Hubble Space Telescope fiasco a prime example, in which very theoretical optical sanity tests were applied to quality control measurements of the telescope's main mirror, instead of more basic tests which would have revealed the fundamental issues causing the Hubble not to work very well until it had been "rescued" - the light path through the telescope altered in orbit with new optics which corrected how the telescope mirror concentrated light. So even NASA scientists can make terrible mistakes.

Basically, a good scientist, NASA or not, has to be honest about what he's doing (including "honest with himself," the hardest kind of honesty) to the point where he can recognize whether or not his ideas were proven to work during an experiment. Then it's just a question of work, work, work, performing experiments and then using the proper math to interpret the results.

The discussion of who has a "high IQ" has evolved to include not just scores on a standardized, pencil-and-paper IQ test (not a very good way to measure intelligence, but it was what the Federal government and other large institutions wanted - a quick, dirty and cheap way to pigeonhole lots of schoolchildren, job applicants and inductees into military service into what turned out to be largely meaningless groups) but their personality development, particularly their drive to achieve - our article on genius talks about that.

The social group MENSA has for years limited its membership to those testing at the 98th percentile (132 or higher on the Stanford-Binet IQ test scale) in intelligence. The mass media have substituted that magic number for a rational discussion on the relationship between IQ and scientific ability (the CBS television drama [Scorpion] uses that as a major plot device, with a collection of people with high IQ scores week after week solving crimes and protecting the nation despite no specific training or evident aptitude for such endeavors).

Neither of the men who discovered the "double-helix" structure of DNA had a "genius-level" IQ, but they shared a Nobel prize for the discovery (I don't know what Rosalind Franklin's IQ was, just that her premature death deprived her of sharing Nobel Prize-level credit on DNA and the fine structure of the tobacco mosaic virus). Richard Feynman (of quantum mechanics fame, and chair of the Challenger disaster investigation) didn't have a genius-level IQ, but he's added tremendously to human knowledge. Actually, very few famous scientists have genius-level IQs.

Physics Forums has a good discussion on [Scientists with low IQs] - a misleading title, because most of the people discussed had IQs clustering around 125 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test scale, which our article on genius suggests ought to qualify them on that part of how genius is measured.

Meanwhile, I have a genius-level IQ (130, the old cut-off value which MENSA still uses as its criterion for membership - no IQ test has used the term "genius" in discussing test results since 1937) - but my mantelpiece is quite bare of Nobel prizes or anything similar. Go figure. loupgarous (talk) 16:13, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

In journals or CDC or NIH reports, etc, are there mathematical models, or estimates about timeline of growing ineffectiveness of the remaining effective antibiotics?

Also, I presume there are researchers at major medical colleges thinking about when and which diseases will become untreatable by antibiotics. I would like to know the names of such scientists, as well as, as I said, papers in journals and reports. Maybe the CDC and NIH keep it secret? Thanks.Rich (talk) 22:55, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

CDC has a 114 page booklet about antibiotic resistance threats (2013) (link), with lots of line charts for the different antibiotics/infection combinations (page 56, 61, 72, 74, 76...).

In the absence of antibiotics, non-resistant strains usually outcompete the resistant ones, so resistance isn't inevitable, it depends on medical practices to prevent transmission of resistant strains, reducing unnecessary and wrong dosage antibiotic prescription, choosing the right one...

Some models are used to predict the best treatment strategy to prevent multiple resistance (link). This article gives a literature review and classification of existing models. A detailed model (with lots of maths) can be found here, a shorter article here.

Predictions can be found in the popular press, here, and the UK report it refers to here, which predicts ten million deaths per year due to resistance in 2050. Ssscienccce (talk) 01:27, 4 October 2015 (UTC)