Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2021 January 15

= January 15 =

Healthcare Visit Frequency Notation
I was looking over some home health care paperwork and came across some references to a visit frequency of "2w9" and another for "1w/1w". I searched the web and believe that "2w9" means twice a week for 9 weeks, but haven't found an explanation for the "1w/1w" case. Is there a standard or reference out there somewhere that defines or describes this notation?. Thnks. -- Tom N talk/contrib 02:57, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I can't find anything for "1w/1w" either. Could it be a typo or variant for 1w1? See https://allnurses.com/what-mean-t440055/ --Khajidha (talk) 03:26, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * When I contacted the source, I was told that this was intended to mean 1 visit per week for 1 week (i.e., one visit total). I don't think the notation is correct, but don't have a source for that. --  Tom N  talk/contrib 02:43, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Christmas tree recycling
What do they do with Christmas trees once they're no longer needed? How are they recycled, and what are the end products? 2601:646:8A01:B180:F84D:6B4F:9537:7CB5 (talk) 04:12, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * This site discusses recycle options for various localities in Virginia and indicates that most trees are shredded to produce mulch. I expect this is also common elsewhere. Another site from the Arbor Day Foundation shows a few other options. In beach communities, discarded Christmas are also used to help build up sand dunes as described here. -- Tom N  talk/contrib 04:32, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It's done in England too. At about the 17 minute mark of this "Escape to the Country" episode, they discuss preservation of sand dunes in Lancashire. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:13, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * How your old Christmas tree can be used to regenerate dune environments. Alansplodge (talk) 12:10, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I saw a CTV News report a day or two ago about a park in or near Montreal, where they had set up boxes to serve as tree stands and invited people to bring their trees there after removing the decorations. The idea was that the public would be able to visit them outdoors for a few weeks and then they would be recycled in the usual way.  Apparently many people left cards in the trees with messages of hope for the new year.  Unfortunately, I can't find a link to the story now; I don't know the name of the place, and my searches are swamped with other news about Christmas trees. --142.112.149.107 (talk) 06:19, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Found it. The park is Jarry Park and the project is called "the ephemeral forest".  News reports:   . --142.112.149.107 (talk) 05:45, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * At least in some places they are used to make biomass (i.e. fuel for power stations); see Biomass One recycles Christmas trees to fuel biomass power plant which refers to an enterprise in Oregon. I suspect that this is more likely in areas with a large forestry sector, where the conversion of off-cuts and brush to biomass is already being done. Alansplodge (talk) 12:10, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * "Christmas trees can be collected, put into anaerobic digesters, and used as the source material for biogas".  Alansplodge (talk) 16:06, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Where I live, they'll take them at the local landfill, where they turned into garden mulch. When I was growing up, we used to just yeet them into the woods behind our house.  Within 4-5 years they decomposed into the soil.  Shortly after I got married, we decided to get an artificial tree.  We've had the same one for like 17 years now, and it doesn't show any signs of needing to be replaced.  -- Jayron 32 13:33, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The great Christmas tree debate: Are real or fake firs better for the environment? says: "...if you have an artificial tree, you would need to use it for at least 10 years in order for its environmental impact to equal that of a responsibly-disposed natural tree". Alansplodge (talk) 16:03, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think we've made it worth it, then. We're not looking to get rid of it anytime soon, either.  -- Jayron 32 19:28, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * For many years Mum had a live tree in a pot, that lived out on the decking for most of the year and came in for Christmas. When it got too big to move we would decorate it outside. DuncanHill (talk) 20:48, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * In northern Michigan, trees are used to mark the safe path for snowmobiles across the ice between Mackinac Island and the mainland. Rmhermen (talk) 02:26, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Why did CERN invent WWW?
CERN is operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Why did CERN move into computer science from particle physics? Move into computer science I mean inventing WWW etc Rizosome (talk) 04:49, 15 January 2021 (UTC)


 * From World Wide Web, "While working at CERN, Berners-Lee became frustrated with the inefficiencies and difficulties posed by finding information stored on different computers." I believe this qualifies as a case of Necessity is the mother of invention. -- Tom N  talk/contrib 05:12, 15 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Sometimes the question is asked, why did it take a physicist to come up with something that useful? Why was it not a computer scientist? If one takes a look at the funding ratio between fundamental physics research and academic research in software technology (not counting work on supercomputers and high-performance computing, which mostly serves physics purposes), it is not so amazing. A proposal similar to TBL's proposal, submitted in 1990, would almost certainly not have been awarded by agencies funding computer-science research – if only because most proposals, also good ones, could not be funded. --Lambiam 11:36, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * As is always the case, the "Great Man" theory falls short in explaining what, in reality, is incremental progress made by many people. Berners-Lee did come up with the World Wide Web while at CERN, but he did not come up with the entire field of computer networking on his own, nor did he even invent the internet.  The basic pieces were there in other forms, he put it all together.  Prior to the WWW, there were other means of sharing information such as FTP (which had been around since the 1970s).  Hypertext had been around in theoretical form since the 1940s, and in practical form since the 1960s.  To piggyback on Lambiam's point regarding funding sources and the slow way computer science developed, there was an alternate protocol to the WWW that was developed by computer scientists at around the same time, called Gopher (protocol).  It was used in parallel to the WWW for much of the early years, I can remember using it during the early 1990s in college when the only web browser was NCSA Mosaic.  Gopher was faster to implement than the WWW, but was far less functional.  So it was adopted earlier even though it was technically developed after the the Web, but by the late 1990s, the Web had been developed to a point where Gopher looked laughably quaint.  -- Jayron 32 13:29, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * This is Lynx erasure! :p --47.152.93.24 (talk) 03:59, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Tim wanted it to be easier to share scientific papers. This sounds insane to younger people, but you used to have to spend hours flipping through bundles of dead trees to find stuff. Now basically all phyics papers are pre-published on arXiv, and other fields are getting in on the practice. --47.152.93.24 (talk) 03:59, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Where can I find current progress of open physics questions?
Where can I find current progress of open physics questions? Rizosome (talk) 05:19, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Such as what? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:50, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Like this Rizosome (talk) 05:59, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Try here: List of unsolved problems in physics. 41.165.67.114 (talk) 07:09, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * ... and down the rabbit hole. 41.165.67.114 (talk) 07:13, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I am asking about progress not the list. Rizosome (talk) 10:22, 15 January 2021 (UTC)


 * There are several websites that are dedicated to bringing science news, such as ScienceDaily and Live Science. If you monitor these regularly, say weekly, you will be kept abreast of all significant developments. In the former, though, physics news is subdivided into many categories and going through all of these one by one is tedious, while the physics news in the latter is almost all space-related. Science World Report has a generic consolidated physics section. --Lambiam 11:08, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * One of the top science journals, Nature, allows people (who do not need to be subscribers) to sign up to e-mail alerts. They will cover all sorts of topics but are very high quality summaries. . Mike Turnbull (talk) 13:28, 15 January 2021 (UTC)