Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2013 November 9

= November 9 =

What is the climate of Moose Factory, Canada?
My friend has an old atlas which says the climate is "TEMPERATE". Since it doesn't say on the Moose Factorypage, what it its climate?Puntaalpo (talk) 00:19, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * According to Temperate climate, the southern part of the area around Hudson Bay, where Moose Factory is located, qualifies as Temperate. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:30, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Moosonee, the nearest sizeable town, has a climate described in our article as "borderline subarctic/humid continental". Tevildo (talk) 00:39, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've done some additional reading up on the issue, and this climate is described as "Temperate Continental" in the Trewartha climate classification scheme. Tevildo (talk) 00:50, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Moosonee with a record high of 100F, and a record low of -52F might be better described as "intemperate". Rmhermen (talk) 18:36, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Alloy Phase Diagrams?
Hello, I was wondering if there is a phase diagram archive. I know specific phase diagrams exist, but is there a page that has a catalog of alloy binary phase diagrams? Is this too technical for general browsing? I know that these help me visualize how different metals interact.

I was also unclear as to the publishing rules for phase diagrams. I don't know that if I had access to a pay to download paper with a phase diagram if I could cite and place it on the website. How could these make it on? Using another person's work may be out of the question, but could an individual create their own phase diagram through experiment to produce these?

Wondering how best to help add some materials science knowledge

Thanks Timmahlaw (talk) 00:36, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I know that both my local universities have books of phases diagrams in their science library reference section. Hundreds of phase diagrams in each one. I recall one book that has the diagrams in stereo pairs, with suitable bi-colour spectacles tucked into a pocket in the back of the book. I cannot remember the names of the books, but if one uni library has them, presumably they all do, providing they offer good engineering/science/metallurgy courses.  By knowing only a very few critical parameters, you can draw your own.  For instance, for tin-lead alloy, you only need the melting point of pure tin, the melting point of pure lead, the eutectic point (temperature and tin/lead ratio), and the corner points, you can draw your own.  And if you draw your own, there cannot be any copyright issues.  Note that for any alloy more complex than 3 constituents, phase diagrams loose their value, as they become multidimensional and impossible to visualise.  A bit like phase diagrams for electrical systems - teachers love phase diagrams because they show what happens in a simple circuit containing just one each of R, C, and L, but for real systems they are useless, and only matrix equations will do the job.  124.178.58.238 (talk) 00:54, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

NFPA 704: All three = 4?
Is there any single chemical that has 4's in all three sections of the NFPA 704? Trinitrotoluene only gets a 2-4-4.Naraht (talk) 01:50, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * tert-Butyl hydroperoxide is the usual example. It's often described as the only one among chemicals that actually get rated (commercial or publicly handled when pure rather than just in-lab use). DMacks (talk) 05:06, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you.

Were there fat cavemen?
I ran across an exhaustive web ad for some diet plan that claimed "there were no fat cavemen!" . And that just made my ears prick up. How would you know one way or another? --209.203.125.162 (talk) 01:53, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * That's not "an exhaustive web ad". It's just plain exhausting. I gave up after a minute or so. How long does it actually last? But most importantly, it's an ad, and a diet ad at that. Probably the worst possible source for honest information on diet. HiLo48 (talk) 02:01, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Pre-agriculture, the life expectancy of hunter-gatherers was around 23, so it wouldn't surprise me if obesity incidence was in the low single digit percentages, but the heiarchical nature of how labor is distributed in nomadic tribal societies suggests that it would probably still exist. 114.94.26.72 (talk) 02:22, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind that a life expectancy of 23 doesn't mean most people died at 23. It means an awful lot of babies died more or less immediately, and young children of childhood diseases.  Once you made it past childhood you had a decent chance of seeing your threescore and ten. --Trovatore (talk) 02:26, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * In that case, wouldn't the mode life expectancy be a more appropriate statistic? Plasmic Physics (talk) 04:00, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Are there any animals from those times that would have liked "fatter and tastier"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:41, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes (pictured). μηδείς (talk) 02:46, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * That doesn't seem like a real person, more of a fertility idol. And, setting "fat" as an ideal makes it seem likely that they were mostly skin and bones.  Of course, for them to know what a fat person looks like, there must have been some. StuRat (talk) 04:51, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah, you are right, Stu. Cavemen had never seen fat people, just statues of fat people. μηδείς (talk) 04:54, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * That's the exact opposite of what I just said. StuRat (talk) 04:57, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Whatever the exact unopposite of what you just said is, you said it looked like an idol, not a person. A little worship carving is the exact definition of an idol. I didn't think it was necesssary to specify it wasn't a fossil.  The bottom line is, the OP can look at the image and need look no further. μηδείς (talk) 05:00, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Obviously it's not a fossil. What I said is that it's not a representation of any real person (the lack of a face is a clue there), but rather of an "ideal".  The Terracotta Army is an example where sculptures do seem to be representative of real people, each with unique features.  StuRat (talk) 05:06, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * When Stu said, and I quote, "for them to know what a fat person looks like, there must have been some", I'm pretty sure he meant "for them to know what a fat person looks like, there must have been some". I could be mistaken, but that's how I read his statement.  Which again, Medeis, is not in any way what you accused him of saying.  Which is odd, since, he plainly said exactly what you said he didn't.  -- Jayron  32  05:09, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The point is the body is an accurate representation of a very obese and probably lactating woman. The lack of limbs seems partially due to damage, and possibly due to the difficulty in working arms on a small figurine.  The head is speculated to be covered in a headdress.  This seems to be based on a real-life model, not one of a long line of distorted copies or "ideals" such as an anatomically impossible barbie doll.  If the headdress theory seems unlikely, look at these pictures of surviving Pagan traditions in Europe, alone.  Costumes and headdress in primitive societies are extremely diverse and ingenious. μηδείς (talk) 17:42, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

In world were most people were like Mo Farah, most of today's normal weight fit people would be considered to be unfit obese couch potatoes. Count Iblis (talk) 18:01, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

The obese people of today would probably not be recognised as real human beings. People in prehistoric times lived in a World where there were other species of hominids around, an obese person today would look as different from them as a Neaderthaler did. Count Iblis (talk) 18:17, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Ridiculous speculation. Hunter-gatherers spent less time, on average, engaging in "work" than modern people (see Original affluent society and Hunter-gatherer) and had at least as much leisure time as we do. The concept that they were emaciated wrecks on the edge of starvation is mostly due to modern H-G's only living on the very edges of livable land, having been forced out there by people employing pastoralism or agriculture. The dudes here, for example, are pretty clearly not in danger of starving to death. Matt Deres (talk) 20:03, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Not emaciated wrecks, but fit and healthy. It's fair to say that the modern Western view of a fit person was until quite recently biased in favor of declaring overweight people healthy. Bushmen in Africa need to be fit enough to chase antilopes to exhaustion in the 40 C midday heat. Count Iblis (talk) 01:59, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Funny you mention Bushmen. Read our article on steatopygia which specifically mentions the Bushmen, and the Venus of Willendorf (which it shows from the side--apparently her arms are folded around her breasts and visible from the side).  Once again, heavy fertile women were seen as normal and desirable among stone age people. Amazing how differnt the facts can be from our expectations. μηδείς (talk) 18:20, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


 * So other than cultural artifacts, there is no way to determine from skeletal remains if there were fat cave people? Any XL-sized clothing would have disintegrated between now and then, right? And there's no way to determine how much adipose tissue was on a skeleton? --209.203.125.162 (talk) 19:43, 11 November 2013 (UTC)


 * That's an interesting question. I'd be surprised if extra weight left no effect on the skeleton.  There is very likely a lack of sufficient samples of skeletons from the relevant era.  Many goddess cults practiced sky burial (India, Central Asia), cremation and secondary inhumation where bones were buried in crypts after the flesh had been stripped, often with thighs and skulls buried separately from other bones. μηδείς (talk) 01:45, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Cryonic suspension and damage from radionuclides
How much damage would naturally occurring radionuclides do to a human body which is otherwise well preserved in cryonic suspension? If the human body repairs such damage naturally, how much time would someone have to spend in and then out of suspension for a, say, 50,000 year suspension period? 114.94.26.72 (talk) 02:17, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not entirely sure the experiment has been done yet... -- Jayron  32  02:24, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The question is irrelevant becasue cryonic suspension is nothing more than a big scam. It is not known how to bring a mamillian body down to cryonic temperatures without doing physical damage, and the damege to the brain in particular is not reversible.  That is why cryonic suspension is illegal unless the person is already legally certifiably dead - and that alone means irreversible brain damage.  Those who believe in cryonic preservation often recognise that the process causes damage in adition to the process of death, but somehow think that all they have to do is keep the body cold long enough for science to figure out how to reverse the damage.  That's logically like saying I've accidentally reduced my digital photo to a smaller file size and resolution, but probably some boffin can tell me how to increase the resolution again.  It doesn't matter what developments in science might occur - you can't replace information that has been thrown away.  Cryonic suspension is just an expensive alternative to sticking the dearly departed in a coffin and burying him/her, or despatching them to the crematorium.  124.178.58.238 (talk) 02:57, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Except, Cells Alive System freezers which effectively perform vitrification are under a decade old and proven to work for periodontal ligament organ preservation for transplants. 114.94.26.72 (talk) 03:35, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * As ratbone (or wickwack or whatever the IP likes to call himself now) said above, we don't know - the experiment has not and cannot be done. The closest we can get is to look at animals or other organisms that can survive being frozen or otherwise "suspended". The wood frog and some other lower vertebrates can survive being frozen for months at a time, so that's certainly doable. There are frozen worms of Caenorhabditis elegans that are getting on 40 years old and survive well enough when thawed out. The water-bear is claimed survive centuries while frozen. There's difficulty extrapolating that to humans, however. A worm like elegans or a mite like the water bear has far fewer cells than we do. Thus, you are more likely to find a frozen worm or mite that has enough cells survive so that it can function, than you will a human, I bet. Going even smaller, there are frozen human cell lines even older than that, and there are claims of endospores surviving tens of millions of years before being revived, but I'm kind of suspicious. Even in organisms that we can get to survive freezing at all, we don't really know what causes viability to drop with time frozen - it may not have anything to do with radiation or mutations. Those are certainly bad for you, but they may not be what causes the most decay of your frozen body. Perhaps proteins or RNA break down spontaneously so that the cells can't recover upon thawing. So yeah, we don't know, and we can't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if some scientists had posited guesses. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:44, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I am the person who posted an answer above. I have not given myself any name at all, as unregistered names seem to attract nutters. Nor have I used the names ratbone or wickwack in the past.  Why do you refer to me as "ratbone"? 58.169.239.51 (talk) 05:30, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Putting aside the biotechnical problems of cryonic suspension and assuming that you can freeze the biological structures so that they don't fall apart due to the chemical reactions that still take place, then you can easily estimate the effects of radioactivity. According to our Background radiation article, you would be subject to 0.48 mSv/year due to natural radioactivity from the environment and 0.39 mSv/year from cosmic radiation, so that is 0.87 mSv/year in total. This radiation damage will then accumulate as it won't be repaired. After about 5700 years you'll have accumulated about 5 Sv, which is the accute lethal dose. Count Iblis (talk) 16:06, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Related questions: Is the amount of damage that can be done to frozen tissue by radiation proportional to its temperature? How much does smoking tobacco, smoking cannabis, and breathing coal dust contribute to the incorporation of radionuclides? 210.13.83.18 (talk) 15:27, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Mainstream scientist
Is Richard Lynn, Rushton, Jensen and Charles Murray considered mainstream scientists, what about their theories? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.88.155.12 (talk) 05:21, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * For reference: Richard Lynn, J. Philippe Rushton, Arthur Jensen and Charles Murray (author)
 * The mainstream consensus is that there is no link between Race and intelligence. Indeed, the whole concept of race is invalid.  The people you mention are or were academics  (except possibly Murray;  I don't consider a "political scientist" to be a scientist), who presumably contributed much within their fields, but their beliefs on this subject are not accepted by most of their peers.  Of course, there's no one single authority that determines what is mainstream and what isn't.  Rojomoke (talk) 09:33, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Not mainstream but scientists okay which is more than can be said of most of the climate change skeptics. The problem with intelligence is that it is a far more emotive and bigotry ridden subject than climate change and and very difficult to get decent figures for when you consider the various confounding factors never mind trying to ascribe causes. When we start getting some sort of consensus among economists then perhaps intelligence can be tackled properly next. At the moment we can just about measure some things like IQ or GNP - but do we really know what such figures for intelligence or gross national product really mean? Dmcq (talk) 15:12, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Anyone who tries to characterize the "intelligence" of races is automatically wrong. Intelligence is not in races, it's in individuals. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:00, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Bugs, I don't think that's a valid statement. That's like saying anyone who tries to characterize the average height of women and of men is automatically wrong.  In this case, the problem lies in the determination of race and of intelligence (or indeed defining them, and then in measuring them).
 * We need to guard against both the bigoted perspective and the blank slate perspective in something such as this, as it tends to be quite emotively charged and even respected scientists can become less than objective on the matter. Mainstream opinion can and not infrequently does remain heavily biased on such issues for ages. In the current era, my impression is a distinct mainstream bias towards "politically correct" perspectives. Add to this that most studies have nothing to work with except current populations, which are the antithesis of controlled experiments, and are notoriously difficult to control for. — Quondum 18:39, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Could you please elaborate, Quondum? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.88.241.133 (talk) 20:47, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll assume you are asking about my comment on biases. Ideas such as the blank slate originate from an politically correct ideal, and not from observation, and catch on for a while because of social bias, and it can be difficult for others to oppose an idea like this publicly.  This can lead to a polarizing pressure, which leads to ideas such as a biological basis for differences in social roles, aptitudes and behaviour in men and women being resisted (or at least not publicly endorsed) by as many scientists.  In the case of racially linked intelligence, there are clearly biasing factors present, which means that one should consider these before just accepting any opinion. However, even considering possible biases, the lack of any adequate definition of race in humans seems to render the whole question of anything linked to it moot.  — Quondum 22:01, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree, political correctness has affected the work on this a great deal, and no wonder good scientists like Rushton, Lynn or Steve Sailer are demonized for not towing the party line. But race can still be found in our genes, because genetic variation is found by continent, so you have negroid from Africa and caucasoid from Europe and stuff like that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.88.241.133 (talk) 22:07, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * No, genetic variance in humans is clinal; the concept of "race" is largely influenced by historical patterns of population movement and mass migrations of a narrow number of people groups, and not in actual genetic distinctions between people. Americans, for example, have a view of "race" that is largely influence by the fact that most of the people who Americans have experience with come from, historically, only a few places: West Africa, East Asia, Northwest Europe, and Mexico/Central America.  That's why Americans tend to think of the world in terms of "Black/Brown/White/Yellow".  But when you look at it from a worldwide perspective, people groups vary gradually and clinally from place to place (and multidimensionally) and the world simply does not fit into the "negroid/caucasoid/mongoloid" baloney.  Anyone who thinks in such terms has such a malformed understanding of genetics that they might as well be arguing for the existance of phlogiston or humorism or of a flat earth.  SO, people who make such arguments have automatically removed themselves from the mainstream just as someone who was adamantly arguing that heat was caused by phlogiston.  -- Jayron  32  22:30, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Reconsider the question in this way: if an anonymous questioner came by asking for several titles of great introductory books by excellent, well-established authors on the subject of sociology and anthropology, would any of the OP's authors rise to the top of the list? I think the answer is "probably not."  If an anonymous questioner came by asking for the most influential recent academic publications in the fields of sociology and anthropology, would these authors rise to the top of the list?  I think the answer is "probably not."  If an anonymous questioner came by asking for links to the websites of the most widely-respected anthropologists and sociologists - individuals or organizations, would these authors' websites, or the websites of the organizations they represent, be on the list?  I think the answer is "probably not."  It is only when you dive deep into the study of a specialist sub-discipline that such authors are even relevant, let alone the question of whether their work is well-respected by other experts.  So I don't think we can consider these authors "mainstream."  "Mainstream" authors will have written textbooks that are read by a sizeable percentage of students and researchers in the field.  Mainstream academics are those who present highlight speeches at national and international tier conferences.  We can help you find those sorts of authors and researchers, if that's your interest.  For example, here is the website for the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.  Their front-page lists five news stories that are considered "hot topics" by mainstream experts in this field.
 * Here is a list of books that the AAPA considers "mainstream," and I would posit that they are requisite reading for anyone who intends to seriously study the topic of race and society:
 * Biological Variation in Health and Illness: Race, Age, and Sex Differences by Theresa Overfield (1985) Addison Wesley Publishing Co., Menlo Park, CA.
 * Bones of Contention: Controversies in the Search for Human Origins by Roger Lewin, Simon Schuster, New York.
 * Braindance by Dean Falk (1992) Henry Holt & Co., New York.
 * Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey (1983) Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
 * Human Ecology: The Story of Our Place in Nature from Prehistory to the Present by Bernard Campbell (1983) Aldine Publishing Co., New York.
 * Lucy: The Beginning of Humankind by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey (1981) Simon & Schuster, New York.
 * Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human by Richard E. Leakey and Roger Lewin (1992) Doubleday, New York.
 * Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe by Jane Goodall (1990) Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
 * "Often there are articles related to biological anthropology in the magazines Natural History, Discover, and Scientific American."
 * So there you have it: a list of mainstream experts, and the books they have written. Of these, I have read Jane Goodall's book, and Dian Fossey's ancillary; I have read some papers from Leakey.  They are entertaining and informative.  But I am not an anthropologist.  I expect that if you want to be taken seriously, you should read these authors, and many many more, to establish a baseline understanding of the mainstream field, before you undertake an investigation into a more complex and controversial subject.  Nimur (talk) 22:43, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The Toronto-based OP is a race-baiting, IP-hopping troll who has already had two of his socks blocked in the last day or so, and the one y'all are currently responding to will be the next one. I've asked (again) for this page to be semi'd, to prevent that bigot from posting here again. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:47, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * To be perfectly frank, I don't very much care what the OP's intentions were. As a result of this question, we've had the opportunity to encourage a proliferation of knowledge.  The OP is not the only person who reads these responses.  Nimur (talk) 22:51, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, Frank, the question has been asked and answered countless times, including several times by this particular IP subnet in the last 24 hours. It adds nothing to our body of knowledge here about IQ in general, though it does raise questions about the IQ of the average Canadian. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:54, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * One of the OP's socks went to Medeis' desk and tried to start a "PC" dialogue, and when he found out (somehow) that Medeis is a black female, he pulled back, saying "that's disconcerting". That tells you all you need to know about the OP. (Those edits were revdel'd by an admin, so you'll have to ask the admin if you want verification of what was said.) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:58, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Actually, I was kind of surprised that dialog had been hidden without my having read it in full, and asked that it be unhidden. I must say, this compliment is one of the funniest non-sequiturs I have ever read at wikipedia. μηδείς (talk) 01:33, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. 24.23.196.85 (talk) 23:49, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Toll-like receptor signaling
Please explain the difference between My-D88 vs TRIF-dependent signaling.--74.190.109.171 (talk) 14:32, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * TRIF for spleen; MyD88 for liver. TRIF and MyD88 are both intra-cellular proteins.--98.88.144.218 (talk) 16:10, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Microbe versus Tumor Immune response
What is the difference between immune responses to microbes versus tumors? Please explain it in technical terms for a biology major.--74.190.109.171 (talk) 14:33, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Do you mean cancerous tumors ? StuRat (talk) 18:21, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, and the tumor antigens like PSA secreted by the cancerous tumor cells.--74.190.109.171 (talk) 18:27, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * While this looks like a homework question for a biology-related course to me, and I don't normally respond to enquiries posted without a name, it seems that you may have been mislead by the term PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen). An antigen is a substance that an immune system antibody can bind to, so that the immune system can recognise the substance or its carrier as something abnormal and so to be dealt with.  But PSA is a substance normally occurring in both the male and female body, attracts no human antibodies and evokes no immune system response.  It is produced in the prostate (males) and vagina (females) as part of a range of substances that protect the sperm from residual urine and assist the sperm to swim and reach an egg cell.
 * Measuring PSA blood level is of value because in the male ONLY the prostate and cancers derived from the prostate can make it. So PSA increasing may be an indication of prostate growth (especially if the man's sex life has wound down), and if the prostate has been removed, then a measurable PSA level means that one or more secondary tumours must be in the body somewhere.
 * The reason PSA is termed an antigen is the way the PSA concentration in the blood is measured. Antibodies from a mouse sensitized to human PSA are added to the blood sample (after blood cells have been removed) and the amount bound is measured.  It's done this way as otherwise an extraodinarily complex purification process would be required.  PSA is thus not an antigen as far as the source human is concerned, it is an antigen as far as the mouse is concerned.
 * It is policy not to do homework for you, but we do like to assist where you are stuck. You will get a better response if you show that you have already made an attempt at answering a question of the form "Explain the difference between A and B....", say by describing where you are stuck.  Your request for an answer in the correct technical language adds to my suspicion that you just want something you can copy-paste.  As your question appears to be homework, I have not answered it directly.
 * 124.178.135.228 (talk) 02:02, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * "But PSA is a substance normally occurring in both the male and female body, attracts no human antibodies" because PSA is a self-antigen. I would say that microbes stimulate CD8+ T cells whereas tumor cells stimulate both CD8+ T cells and CD4+ T cells.--98.88.144.218 (talk) 16:07, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmm. I'm a bit unsure about whether PSA is generally expressed by women. Some women can have severe allergological reactions to the PSA in seminal fluid. See . Seminal plasma allergy caused by IgE against PSA definately occurs. I would have assumed that these women had been tolerant to PSA if PSA were a protein they expressed. --NorwegianBluetalk 20:42, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * is not evidence that human females can be alergic to human PSA. See http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/162/7/704.long.  I did simplify things a bit.  There is a degree of confusion in medical circles about just where PSA is produced in the female, but there is no doubt that it is produced.  As the citation I gave says, measurement shows that the concentration of PSA in the juices of excited females is not dissimilar to the PSA concentration in male ejaculate (see citation 3rd papa). And until recent years, the medical community had a very poor understanding of how sex works for the female.  Indeed the name "PSA" arose because early researchers thought it was prostate-specific.  Much like the folk that discovered the BRCA-1 gene thought it was specific to breast cancer (becasue they were looking for breast cancer causes, and didn't look at other cancers), whereas we now know that it is involved in all sorts of cancers.  The PSA test was initially used in some jurisdictions with vaginal swabs from the alleged victim to "prove" rape! 124.178.135.228 (talk) 02:21, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Objects above microwaves
Is it dangerous to put a tray of bread or other object above a microwave oven when it is working?--90.165.119.216 (talk) 20:27, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * No -- the microwave oven is sealed so the microwaves can't escape. 24.23.196.85 (talk) 20:45, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * No, there is no reason that shielding around the top of the oven would be any less effective than that around the sides. HiLo48 (talk) 20:49, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * There's also the matter of letting heat and steam escape. Most models have those vents at the sides, but if a model did have the vents on top, then those vents should not be blocked. StuRat (talk) 20:56, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I was about to give exactly the same warning as StuRat but go on to say that my wife is always putting stuff there and nothing seems to go wrong. But it's her kitchen. Thincat (talk) 21:02, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * And as for why they might put the vents on the top, a microwave oven to be mounted such that there would be no clearance on the sides and back might have top vents (or perhaps front vents). StuRat (talk) 05:54, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I used to have a small CRT TV above my microwave; it worked fine until I steam-cleaned the oven, and dampness (temporarily) screwed the tv. CS Miller (talk) 19:40, 12 November 2013 (UTC)