Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2018 May 4

= May 4 =

Complete analgesia
I have used weak analgesics to deal with minor pains with significant success, but not to the level of completely eradicating the pain. My question: would a strong analgesic, e.g. morphine, in a high dose, completely eradicate the pain of say, a sharp pinch, in most people?--Leon (talk) 07:44, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Are you "most people"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:49, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * If you mean, do I want morphine, then no.


 * If you mean, would I be able to enjoy complete analgesia, I have no idea.--Leon (talk) 12:15, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Your doctor might be able to tell you. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:24, 4 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Per the lead of our article analgesic: Analgesic drugs act in various ways on the peripheral and central nervous systems. They are distinct from anesthetics, which temporarily affect, and in some instances completely eliminate, sensation.. While this does not answer your question as stated, if the real question is whether complete pain suppression is feasible, the answer is yes. Tigraan Click here to contact me 16:48, 4 May 2018 (UTC)


 * There must a limit to how long complete surgical anaesthesia is feasible for. A highly specialized very well paid physician (anesthesiologist) has to watch the pulse, breathing and stuff all the time to make sure level of consciousness stays between subconscious and cardiac arrest, I think there's long-term toxicity or something (I am not a doctor), at the very least the muscles would waste away like the NASA Bedrest Study, it'd be ludicrously expensive, and even if those weren't the case waiting for complete anesthesia without bad side effects like unconsciousness, small therapeutic range or addictability to be invented might require decades or centuries passing for the person in an instant like time travel and not everyone would want to do that. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:25, 4 May 2018 (UTC)


 * The difficulty in answering questions like this is that there is no objective way of measuring pain. The standard way that doctors measure pain is by using what is called a numeric rating scale: "On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 represents no pain and 10 represents the worst imaginable pain, how would you describe your pain?" (See our pain scale article for further information.) The fact is, when people are given large amounts of morphine, most of them answer with 0. Looie496 (talk) 21:16, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Morphine is only a little better than a sugar pill where bone metastases are concerned, and then there's nausea, and pain from tremendous constipation (despite everything). If you think 20 years is long enough for an ex-smoker to breathe a sigh of relief, I know someone who can prove you wrong... Wnt (talk) 21:59, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Why hasn't a brain scan been invented for less subjectivity? (for research if not everyday uses) 0 to 10 is so wishy washy. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:09, 4 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Since morphine and other strong pure mu-opioids (fentanyl, etc) only block respiratory drive, a patient who is intubated and watched by an anesthesiologist can be given enough morphine ALONE for general anesthesia. That means coma and no pain, so that is your answer (unless you demand preservation of consciousness, and then the answer is "no"). This has been tried: back in the days when available gas anesthetics were either flammable or depressant on the heart, morphine-alone was actually sometimes used for anesthesia in open-heart surgery (we have better gas anesthetics now). I'd hate to have to do that on a heroin addict, but it works with the non-opioid dependent. For all I know it works with everybody, if you can get enough opioid in. As a practical matter, you might deplete your pharamacy stock first. S  B Harris 22:34, 4 May 2018 (UTC)


 * See also here. Count Iblis (talk) 23:40, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Need help identifying species of waterfowl
This is a photograph I took near Port of Anchorage late in the afternoon yesterday. Heavy cloud cover, 40x zoom, camera not designed for low light, so it turned out a little bit grainy. justinacolmena (talk) 17:19, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * They look to me like Canada geese. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:39, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, thank you. It was a little bit dark and hard to see under those clouds. One of them was catching fish in that stream, but I was not able to catch a photo with the fish in its beak. justinacolmena (talk) 18:20, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * If you want it to be interesting, you need the fish to be catching a smaller fish at the same time, anyway. --69.159.62.113 (talk) 05:58, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * They're a bloody nuisance on this side of the Atlantic - do you want them back?  Alansplodge (talk) 15:42, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Is the finger in dam short story scientifically possible?
1470 pounds per square inch through a 20mm pipe is only 100 cubic meters per hour, not enough to flood quickly. If the property damage of 100 cubic meters per hour was worth shivering all night to prevent it probably wouldn't have been deserted enough that he wasn't discovered for so long. If it'd erode away to unstoppable breach size in the short time it'd take to get help then that's certainly not a very gracefully failing dam design at the least. Yet his finger could keep the breach the same size all night. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:08, 4 May 2018 (UTC)


 * No, it is not plausible; in an earthen dam, most of the water loss is caused by flow directly through the dam, not through any leaks or holes. Here's a free set of lecture notes from Waterloo's civil engineering department: Seepage in Earth Dams..., pretty standard textbook stuff.
 * Nimur (talk) 22:07, 4 May 2018 (UTC)


 * While the main point of a moral story is not its physical plausibility, I don't think you've properly analysed it. You're contrasting the flow through an unobstructed but fixed-diameter pipe with that through an unobstructed and erodable (hence ever-enlarging) hole. However, in the scenario of the story the child's finger blocks the hole so that there is no flow, and hence no erosion. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.217.209.143 (talk) 23:19, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Note that the story was written by an American lady called Mary Mapes Dodge, who had never been to The Netherlands when she wrote it. Alansplodge (talk) 15:25, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * While Dodge's 1865 novel Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates popularised the story of "The Little Dutch Boy" (which is recounted within the novel), it had appeared in at least ten earlier English-language versions published in England and America from 1850 onwards, and allegedly stems from a French original by Eugenie Foa (died 1852). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.217.209.143 (talk) 17:35, 7 May 2018 (UTC)