Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2011 March 21

= March 21 =

Why aren't Washlets common in the US yet?
It's popular in Japan; what's wrong with it being sold in US stores? Why do we still have to deal with it the old way when a newer form of hygiene already exists? --70.179.169.115 (talk) 04:07, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * This was recently asked here: . (Based on the similarity in the I/P address, it looks like it was asked by you.)  StuRat (talk) 05:06, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * As soon as I read the article I said "I want one." Maybe you should try importing some and try to sell them. You would soon find either the answer to your question or you would make a profit.--Shantavira|feed me 09:04, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Shanta, you can get a varying range of cost of bidet-seats at http://www.BioBidet.com. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.179.169.115 (talk) 22:35, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

The cost of importing a washlet is high, reportedly $660 or so bought online. It requires behind the toilet an electric outlet that is properly installed for use near water, with a ground fault interruptor. A Google search for "Washlet" finds many suppliers. Low enthusiasm for washlets in USA is comparable to the low acceptance of a similar bathroom accessory, the bidet. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 09:28, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Are showers as common in Japan as in the U.S.? It is not unheard of for someone in the U.S. to duck into the shower after an especially... sticky... experience. Wnt (talk) 09:33, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * When someone was promoting bidets in Australia some years ago it was discovered that plumbing rules demanded an independent warm water supply because of the possibility of gravity allowing unwanted solids to enter the water supply. Cost then became a big issue. HiLo48 (talk) 11:12, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Radiation dose inside a working nuclear reactor?
If you can get inside a working nuclear reactor without disrupting the reaction and stay there for a minute, what dose of radiation would you get? F (talk) 09:48, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Based on this chart which breaks down lots of various radiation dosages, standing next to the Chernobyl reactor for one minute during the meltdown would give you about a 5 Sv dose. I'd say that's a good ballpark number for normally-operating reactors, too.  That's on the very upper edge of "if you're lucky, you don't die straightaway of radiation poisoning." &mdash; Lomn 12:38, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Even with the author's caveat, I'm not sure that xkcd cartoon is a "reliable source," let alone encyclopedic. Here's Radiation in Perspective from the Department of Energy's Radiation Protection Policy.  Each reactor type is different; usually, if you were working with a reactor, you'd have to take a DOE or an OSHA training course.  Radiation levels inside the reactor would probably be fatal, maybe or maybe not instantaneously; but if you were actually inside the reactor, you'd have other problems besides radiation to worry about!  The temperature isn't comfortable for human life in there, either - and there's not much breathable air - in fact, the nuclear reactor core is not a suitable place for you to go inside, even for a minute.  You might equally well ask about environmental safety hazards if you were inside the combustion chamber in an automobile's engine cylinder.  Nimur (talk) 14:24, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Indeed. The inside of a boiling water reactor such as those at Fukushima contains superheated water and steam at a temperature of about 285 °C and a pressure of about 75 atmospheres. It is basically a huge pressure cooker. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Even inside a tiny research reactor, the radiation would be quickly toxic if you were inside the unshielded core while it was undergoing criticality. The amount of neutrons alone in an operating reactor, much less gammas and other nasty things, is just fantastic. That's the whole point of a reactor. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:23, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The sievert article has some interesting equivalent dose values.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 17:19, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * An alternative interpretation of the question would be if you were inside the containment building of a reactor while it was operating. Early on in the Three Mile Island accident, a spokesman for Metropolitan Edison asserted that he could "walk around inside the containment building, right now, without harm from radiation," implying that the radiation level in the building (and outside the reactor) would not be impossibly high. (He was later shown to be quite wrong: he would have gotten a lethal dose in less than an hour). When a reactor is being refueled, humans work in the containment building and around the reactor, since the valves, switches and pipes do not fix themselves, and a reactor is a very high maintenance device, with constant testing repairs, replacements, and retrofits. While the reactor is operating, I doubt that it is considered safe to wander around in the containment building. Edison (talk) 18:35, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Containment building says that you can be in the containment building while it is on full power, but implies you are getting a non-negligible amount of radiation (you can only stay in there a limited amount of time before getting your safe dose). That is about what I would guess. A reactor, even one on full power, is still relatively shielded by the water and the reactor vessel. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:26, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Some people saw this short blue flash when something goes supercritical for example in the Cecil Kelley criticality accident or things while Tickling the dragon's tail. This is only a few microseconds and they die relative soon (days), so with a full blast nuclear reactor it should be over in seconds.--Stone (talk) 18:52, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Buffalo
Is it true that Buffaloes do not have sweat glands ? Jon Ascton   (talk)
 * Not quite. According to this report, "buffalo skin has one-sixth the density of sweat glands that cattle skin has, so buffaloes dissipate heat poorly by sweating."  Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:16, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Which of the various bovine species commonly called ""buffalo" are you referring to? Roger (talk) 14:23, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The OP is from India so probably Water Buffalo or perhaps the Wild water buffalo Nil Einne (talk) 16:04, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Neurons and memories
Are memories believed to be stored with the same set of neurons throughout the years? Is an individual neuron believed to be able to be a part of multiple completely different memories? 20.137.18.50 (talk) 13:10, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the answers are both "no", but we await an expert to confirm and expand the answer. Meanwhile our article Neuroanatomy of memory might be of interest.    D b f i r s   14:19, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It's basically impossible for us to know the real answer right now, but some have hypothesized the existence of specific neurons that store a representation of a complex concept or object (presumably by linking up a whole network of neurons that "remember" different aspects of that concept or object). The classic example is the grandmother neuron which is hypothesized to fire whenever you think of your grandmother, or whenever a stimulus (such as a scent, or the memory of a particular location) evokes a memory of your grandmother. --- Medical geneticist (talk) 15:19, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Most neuroscientists believe that memories are stored, not in neurons per se, but rather by altering the strength of the synapses that connect neurons to each other. An individual neuron in the cerebral cortex makes on the order of 10,000 synaptic connections to other neurons, so this gives quite a large potential storage capacity.  With synaptic storage, each individual neuron can participate potentially in thousands of memories, or conceivably even millions.  Whether a memory is stored in the same set of synapses across the years is a controversial issue -- some neuroscientists think that memories need to be "refreshed" periodically and that this may involve bringing new synapses into play.  Our article on synaptic plasticity contains some relevant information, although most of it is pretty technical. Looie496 (talk) 17:50, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Expiry date of bottled water
Looking at some bottled water today, I was surprised to notice an expiry date printed on the bottle. Does pure water become unfit for drinking after long periods, assuming the seal of the bottle is not broken? The label on the bottle read 'purified tap water'. 60.48.212.9 (talk) 17:34, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Plastic bottles can contaminate the water over time via leaching (chemistry) of chemicals from the plastic. 82.43.90.38 (talk) 17:40, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Good to know, thank you. 60.48.212.9 (talk) 17:51, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Look up bisphenol A, endocrine disruptors, etc. Wnt (talk) 19:47, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * A follow-up question: what are those expiration dates based on? Do the manufacturers or maybe the professional organizations have studies that show the leaching rates or demonstrate safety after known periods?  Are they just arbitrary?  SDY (talk) 17:55, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * They may have reason to believe that it's of "Acceptable" quality up to that point, but don't study it much beyond that. Still, how long something lasts is so dependent on the conditions under which it is stored that a "look, smell, and taste" test is far better than a date stamped on the package.  If your water bottle spent time on the dashboard of your car in the bright summer sun, then it would deteriorate far quicker than in a fridge, probably quicker than the date.  There also could sometimes be a sleazy angle to them printing short expiration dates, if they want consumers to toss out their product, while it's still good, and buy more.  StuRat (talk) 18:38, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Here in the UK there is a difference between Use by dates and Best before. Here's some guidance from the FSA about the difference (http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/foodlabels/labellingterms/bestbefore/). In terms of 'leaching' from plastic you may be interested in EFSAs opinion on the safety (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/428), the concerns of leaching from plastics (from my limited understanding) are not particularly high. ny156uk (talk) 18:44, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, in some markets (*cough*EU*cough*) there is a requirement that all material for human consumption has an expiry date. And there also is a requirement that prescribes maximum and minimum expiry times, independent of the product (probably in a directive invented by a different, but similar committee). Put the two together, and... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:04, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Do you have a citation for that? I ask because we don't have "expiry dates" in the EU, some products have "use by" dates and some have "best before" dates, as noted by Ny156uk above. DuncanHill (talk) 22:55, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Here in the UK, I've never seen an "expiry date" on foodstuff, and, of course, fresh unpackaged food has neither a "best before" nor a "use by" date because its condition is usually fairly obvious. In some cases, the "use by" date on packaged goods is mainly for the convenience of the seller to ensure efficient stock rotation.    D b f i r s   07:52, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Annoying. Annoying. Annoying.
Most or all people eventually become annoyed by a sound or short phrase that is repeated ad nauseum. Can anyone point me to any studies or articles about this phenomenon? The closest thing I could find on Wikipedia that was at all related was our semantic satiation stubby article, which isn't really about the same thing. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:30, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * "HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead ..." hydnjo (talk) 22:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * There's the phonological loop, which is implicated in earworms. We have a dedicated bit of short-term memory for storing things we've heard recently, and if this were to be repeatedly filled with the same information ... well, I can't see the harm in that at all, actually. Not sure how to make this answer your question, but I feel it must be possible with effort and OR. 81.131.46.134 (talk) 01:59, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Temple Grandin says in Animals in Translation (on 49-50) that intermittent noise triggers the "orienting response" in mammals. I'm not sure if that's the same thing you're talking about, but it's something. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:46, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

vacuum electricity
Nikola Tesla observed that electrons transmitted through a near perfect vacuum in his vacuum tubes appeared as corona several feet through the air surrounding the tube. If there is nothing in the tube between the electrode and the glass, then how do the electrons convey through the vacuum and into the surrounding air. could this be explained by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_current#Vacuum — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lufc88 (talk • contribs) 19:12, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I think that's somewhat of a red herring. The vacuum is an insulator unless electrons are moving through it, yes - but that doesn't answer the issue of why the electrons move through it.


 * In a vague sense, my impression is that the metal anode fills with extra electrons, typically positioned at the boundary of the conductor, which fill up the conduction band to a level high enough that they can escape it. Once free, the electrons will be pushed away from the electrode and can move in response to any small electric field in the area.  But someone with a better understanding of articles like Electronic band structure, Nearly-free electron model, Empty Lattice Approximation, and so on needs to give a better answer. Wnt (talk) 20:59, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Abnormal darkness
There are some sources claiming that there were relatively short periods of abnormally intense, unexplained darkness, sometimes even spread over the cities (specifically over Wimbledon, London on April 2, 1904 and over Louisville on March 7, 1911). Is there any explanation for that or it's indeed abnormal?--89.76.224.253 (talk) 21:46, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * (The book linked to by the querent is a compilation of The Book of the Damned, which is also available to read on Wikisource, along with other books by the same author.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:17, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Big Bang echo
Just watching Dr Jim Al-Khalili's latest BBC programme, in which he explains about the microwave background radiation being the remnant of the Big Bang. I've known about this for some time, but the following question has just popped into my head. Is it possible to calculate at what point this radiation was in visible light, and what would the sky have looked like at that point? Or is it possible to say when the sound waves from the Big Bang would have stopped being audible to human ears? (OK I know humans weren't around then. Humour me, it's a thought experiment!) --TammyMoet (talk) 21:58, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Sound waves only take on meaning in a medium, such as air. In the hard vacuum of space, there is no sound.  -- Jayron  32  22:23, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, but right after the big bang the universe was much denser. This question is not completely meaningless. Dauto (talk) 01:09, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The microwave background has a black body spectrum with a temperature of around 2.7 Kelvin. Blackbody radiation is visible to human beings at temperatures from 1000 K to 10000 K, more or less, with the colors shown here (although human beings couldn't exist at those temperatures, so this is all somewhat unrealistic). The ratio between the temperature now and the temperature at an earlier time is given by the redshift factor z. So the radiation would be visible for redshifts from z=1000/2.7 to z=10000/2.7, or z=400 to z=4000, more or less. Ned Wright's Cosmology Calculator will give you the age of the universe for any value of z (enter the value in the box labeled "z", then click "flat"). This gives an age range of 40,000 to 2,000,000 years after the big bang, more or less. But prior to 400,000 years after the big bang the universe was filled with an opaque plasma and there wasn't really a photon background, so it's probably better to say that the photon background was visible from its time of origin (400,000 years after the big bang) until 2,000,000 years after the big bang. It was initially yellow-orange (3000K) and then red (1000K) before fading into the infrared. As for what the sky would look like, take the present-day night sky, remove the stars (since there were no stars), and replace the uniform black with uniform yellow-orange or red. -- BenRG (talk) 02:20, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Cool, thanks Ben! --TammyMoet (talk) 09:27, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you sure there is an upper limit to visible temperatures? While the peak will be out of the visible spectrum, there will still be plenty of visible light emitted too. --Tango (talk) 19:39, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're right. Oops. (Although at some point it will be bright enough to instantly blind you, making it effectively invisible...) -- BenRG (talk) 08:00, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Isn't space a gas?
I was going to smugly reply to the previous question (about the big bang) with "sound waves can't propagate through the vacuum of space, duh". Space isn't a perfect vacuum, though, and it contains a certain amount of hydrogen, so is space actually a very sparse gas, through which sound could travel? 213.122.13.4 (talk) 22:27, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Lower density, implies higher isolation. Quest09 (talk) 22:55, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Does that mean yes, sound could travel through space, extremely poorly? 213.122.13.4 (talk) 23:07, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't see why not, though it would soon get lost amongst the random jostling between whatever atoms and compounds are out there. So, even if you scream really loudly, nobody is likely to be able to hear you. However, there's also this intriguing article (okay, a preview of an article). Clarityfiend (talk) 23:56, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The interstellar medium does propagate pressure waves - in essence "sound" - provided the wavelength is large enough. The typical example is the pressure waves associated with the galactic spiral arms, which have a length scale measured in thousands of light years. Of course, this is a "sound" that is so low frequency that no organic ear could ever hear it.  Typically to avoid dispersion, one wants the wavelength of the pressure wave to be much larger than the distance that individual particles will travel between collisions. In the interstellar medium, with about ~10 atom / cm^3, one would expect a wave to propagate successfully (rather than dissipate) if the wavelength is greater than ~20 AU.  The intergalactic medium (with only 1 atom / m^3) would require the pressure front to be thousands of times larger than that, but it is possible if you had an astrophysical process capable of generating a large enough perturbation.  Dragons flight (talk) 00:01, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * And right after the big bang the universe was much denser than today allowing for short waves to propagate. Dauto (talk) 01:13, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Why is work - often - not enjoyable?
During evolution, only humans who enjoyed working could have survived. So, shouldn't we have a "I love work" gen? Quest09 (talk) 22:52, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Conserving as much energy as possible by doing as little work as needed to survive is beneficial in situations where food is in short supply 82.43.90.38 (talk) 22:58, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Not all work is equal. Humans love certain types of tasks — and you'll find that the jobs people love the most are the ones that satisfy them. For example (per Temple Grandin), we are hard-wired (like most mammals) to love seeking things out. We love the search, love the hunt, love the pursuit, love the flirtation, love the chase. We love the act of finding things more than we like the things found. I think most of us have experienced this in one way or another. That's a definitely genetic predisposition (though not unique to humans at all, which makes sense), but whether we enjoy "working" generally probably is not one. We like certain types of jobs. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I like that theory, but I dispute it. People enjoy creativity (I haven't checked, but I expect the article backs me up on that). Hunting for things is a creative act, provided it's challenging for the hunter. Being a litter-picker involves hunting for litter, but is not a creative act, since old cans and gum and so on don't make much effort to escape. Being a hunter of something which you have mastered the task of hunting for is probably dull. Being an artist is a creative and probably fun job, but only in the most tenuous sense involves searching for anything. 213.122.13.4 (talk) 01:07, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, that's not what Grandin has found, with humans or with animals. Just saying. "Creativity" is not the kind of category she uses — it doesn't correspond with some sort of basic neural circuit, whereas "seeking" does. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:56, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Being an artist is a creative and probably fun job. Being an artist is, for most professional artists, very stressful! Just saying. Pfly (talk) 18:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * If work were enjoyable, the industrial revolution wouldn't have happened. Count Iblis (talk) 00:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * For a lot of people, even the most enjoyable activity can be made unpleasant by rigid bureaucratic demands and crappy bosses HiLo48 (talk) 01:12, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I think happiness is relative to one's acceptance of the situation, and is related to homeostasis - that is, unhappiness is caused by a notion of things being wrong, and is always in some sense a form of indignation and of aspiration. So people in modern times might be unhappy about work that ancient people would accept as normal, because these days we're dimly aware that there must be a better way. In addition to this, I see you make the assumption that a human unhappy with necessary hard work is a human who refuses to do the essential work, and starves: does that really follow? Evolution has no particular interest in our having a nice time, so long as we breed. 213.122.13.4 (talk) 01:13, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * There's also the factor of conflicting priorities. People have different ideas about how to do things and different things that make them happy. If you work for a person or a department or a company whose goals and priorities conflict with yours, there's a good chance you won't be very happy. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:24, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Evolution is very slow. We mainly enjoy hunting and gathering, and perhaps farming and herding, because that's what we did for most of human history.  The industrial revolution and information economy haven't been around long, and few people have died because they disliked such work, so there is very little evolutionary pressure for us to grow to like it.  StuRat (talk) 02:25, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I would just add my 2 cents in that I think what most people do for a "job" is not actually what evolutionally would be called work. Sitting at an office at a computer, or fixing some one's plumbing are "detached" from an actual sense of survival. Sure the money you earn gives you those things, but you are earning MONEY not the things you need to survive. Just a personal anecdote which might help illustrate what I mean, whenever I do some gardening at home, admittedly it's not something I particularly "like" doing, I don't "look forward to it", but when I physically OWN and enjoy the efforts of my labour I feel a far greater sense of achievement and pleasure then if I did it for someone else to earn some money, even if I then could use that money to hire someone else to fix my garden. Vespine (talk) 02:48, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Joy is not the only motivator. Hunger is a motivator to hunt or gather food. Being cold is a motivator to build a fire or make clothes. Affection for others is a motivator to care for them. Joy is a major motivator in reproduction but most people wouldn't call that work. Also, most humans above a certain age are relatively good at predicting what will serve them in the future, and plan and act accordingly. Human intelligence enables us to make such predictions and actions in situations our basic instincts don't cover. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:38, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I think that there should be some adaptation to favor productive labor in general; the problem is that society's notion of labor isn't the same as that. It's not just that people enjoy hunting and fishing - they enjoy gardening, fixing the house, editing a Wikipedia article.  What they don't enjoy is when they are coerced by a badly designed economic system to spend their time harming other people or doing something useless - such as telemarketing, for example, which is particularly famous for burning out its workers quickly.  They don't enjoy being stood over and threatened.  I think it's all too clear that modern American society offers a whole lot of "work" that society would be better off without, and that people are coerced into it solely to prove the dominance of certain high-caste individuals and groups over themselves and others.  Spending one's days in abject subjection, strictly as a rite of worship toward the "rich" (i.e. those who claim to themselves control of the Earth's resources or of means of using them) - that is not something people have evolved to accept.  In fact, they are adapted to challenge it by violence. Wnt (talk) 04:53, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Various things give us some kind of biological high - certainly sex and eating. This is the way that evolution makes a thing enjoyable; it makes us get a buzz out of it. (Perhaps some activities also soothe us.) It can't cause us to enjoy an activity in an intellectual way, it can't make us express sophisticated approval of it. It also has to be an activity which is easily identified on a biological level - it can't take cognition to identify that the thing is happening, or else our genes (which don't describe our plastic brains) have no handle on it. (I mean "dynamically formed" and not "made of plastic".) So, taking weaving as an example:
 * It would probably be inconvenient if we got high specifically off weaving, and wove things constantly.
 * I doubt any mechanism could evolve to reliably detect whether we were weaving, anyway, since it's not an instinct.
 * Detecting productive labour in general is the same problem, multiplied many times (because of all the kinds of work).
 * The choice of the right work for a human to do requires thought, which puts it beyond the reach of evolution. 213.122.63.19 (talk) 05:34, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * And it's rarely a simple matter. After a mature aged career change I am now a high school teacher in a government school. The job is incredibly rewarding, when one realises the advances students have made, often in a lot more ways than just knowing more of their subject matter. But there can also be massive frustrations in the job, in the form of under-resourced schools, incompetent administration, and bureaucratic demands. It's a shame that we can't seem to get one without the other. (And a quick qualifier - the incompetent administration comment is not referring to my current school ;-) ) HiLo48 (talk) 10:40, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Not to worry, the incompetent administration probably doesn't know how to use the Internet and never even heard of Wikipedia. StuRat (talk) 14:09, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * A common complaint about work is that it 'stresses me out'. So a 'love to work' gene may be tantamount to a 'work myself to death gene'. Hardly favorable for genetic propagation. Vranak (talk) 17:06, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * But that just leads back to the original question (restated) of why we find work stressful. StuRat (talk) 17:16, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, it's like driving a car. If you drive it wildly, lots of hard acceleration and braking and turning, running over potholes, it's gonna wear down and need a vacation (go to the shop). Same thing with working -- if you are a calm and rational and sensible human being you can accomplish your work without a great deal of stress, one would imagine. However, there are issues like indoor air pollution, so no matter how calm you are at the office, you may be inhaling vast quantities of pollution. See Sick Building Syndrome. Vranak (talk) 17:36, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * (ec) We have the page Workplace stress. Lots of info and ideas there. The Happiness page might play into the question too. Many people are unhappy, stressed, anxious, etc, whether or not they're at work. Happiness is something we still don't fully understand—at least how and why it happens, and how to stay happy. I'd even suggest most people spend most of their time trying to find happiness, and then trying to stay happy. Seems like almost no one succeeds; the struggle is usually lifelong, no? I've met a few very dedicated (very very dedicated) Buddhists who seem to have a near-constant state of happiness or joy, even when doing work they don't "enjoy". Their happiness seems different from my ordinary understanding of the word (one such "dedicated" and happy person that comes to mind is Bonnie Myotai Treace).


 * Temple Grandin was mentioned above. I found her book Animals in Translation an excellent description of basic emotions in people as well as animals, how and why they work the way they do, and why emotions can often feel unpleasant or stressful; and, sometimes, all-too-fleetingly, pleasant. An interesting bit I always recall is her notion that while people will generally choose "powerful fear" over "powerful pain", animals (at least "higher" animals like dogs, horses, cows, etc) tend to be more traumatized by powerful fear than powerful pain. Pfly (talk) 18:18, 22 March 2011 (UTC)