User talk:Sbharris/archive11

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive #11 Messages from Jan- end May 2012.

Sodium in biology

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a search with the contents of Sodium in biology, and it appears to be very similar to another Wikipedia page: Serum sodium. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case. If you are intentionally trying to rename an article, please see Help:Moving a page for instructions on how to do this without copying and pasting. If you are trying to move or copy content from one article to a different one, please see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia and be sure you have acknowledged the duplication of material in an edit summary to preserve attribution history.

It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. CorenSearchBot (talk) 05:06, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Sbharris, I have moved Serum sodium to Sodium in biology, which seems to accomplish the purpose of your PROD request while maintaining the attribution that is necessary for GFDL compliance. (Page creation needs to note that it was originally split from Sodium, etc.) Please let me know if this is all right or if there's anything else I can do to facilitate everything getting attributed/classified properly. Happy editing! — madman 17:33, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, that pretty much did it, except that I had almost doubled the size of Sodium in biology (and removed a few bad illustrations, like the lab-test color chart) so I had to go back and put my previous version in, instead. But it now is as I wanted it. Gracias. SBHarris 20:04, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Ref for scabies

Wondering if you could provide a ref for your recent edit? " Except in infants and the immunosuppressed, infection generally does not occur in the skin of the face or scalp. " Thanks --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:20, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Mueang and Mang

A "Mueang" (Thai: เมือง) is an administrative division in Thailand, whereas the "Mang" in Mangrai is written differently in Thai (written as มัง) and has, as far as I know, no meaning. I have reverted your edits to Chiang Rai as you seem to have gotten these two mixed up. - Takeaway (talk) 12:29, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Mueang = Mu'ang = Muang = (Thai: เมือง) is certainly part of the name for an adminstrative division, but it's an older word that simply means "land" as in "Muang Thai." More specifically it once referred to the best type of land, a bit of flat land at the bottom of a gentle basin, perfect for growing rice without irrigation: [1]. As for King Mangrai, if you Google "Muang Rai" you can find him (for example [2]) named as "Phya Muang Rai" as founder of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, but his name transliterated this way instead of Mangrai, and they presumably are thinking that he was named as "King of the Land." But that may be a false etymology since as you point out, his name is at best a contraction of that. So I don't really know if the "Mueang" in Mueang Chiang Rai refers to the king or the province ("chiang" of cource means city or village). If it refers to province only, the Chiang Rai article should point that out at the beginning, instead of starting by saying that "Mueang Chiang Rai" is a name of the city! SBHarris 23:41, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

To use the transcription from Thai to Latin script as a way of explaining the possible etymology of the Thai words เมือง (mueang = town) and มัง (mang = part of the name of king Mangrai) is hardly reliable. Having seen too many different (and sometimes very personal) transcriptions of Thai, I stopped presuming anything. Very often these transcriptions are based on mishearing someone pronouncing the Thai word. - Takeaway (talk) 09:57, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

People not patient

Hey Sb we also typically use people or person rather than patient when we write. Cheers Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:53, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Eh? In what circumstances? That would rather depend on the social role of the organism with the disease, would it not? We are talking about diseases getting medical care, often, not just diseases that exist in a vacuum. Sometimes the presense of a professional diagnosis DEFINES the condition as a "pathology," and if you don't have the label (Asperger's syndrome, Gulf War Syndrome, Wilson's syndrome) you don't even (legally, medically) have the disease. Sometimes you don't even have it legally/medically (which are not the same) if you DO have a label, yet there's no quesion that you still retain the status of patient. If you are being treated for a medical condition by somebody else, or even given a label (like myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic lyme disease) by somebody who is a professional, you are a "patient" by definition.

Of course, you are ALSO a person, and perhaps ALSO a client (customer?) if you pay, or intend to, and you also keep your roles as man or woman or child or whatever, but "patient" is most specific to describe your role as the diseased or at least distressed one in the medical interaction, and thus better. If you refuse to use the word "patient" in medical care, then you must talk about "persons" (or "animals" in the case of veterinary medicine) and properly switch to "patient" at least by the time you get to diagnosis and treatment, which is weird (since you must now decide when the creature with the ostensible pathology enters this social role, which isn't as easy as it is in legal practice where the transition happens exactly when you tender a retainer fee). Even veterinarians will not be happy with your suggestion, as they universally use the term "patient" for their (non-human).. er...patients. So, have you thought this through, or are you giving me PC crap? SBHarris 19:51, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Work discussion

Please avoid use of pronouns (such as "you") in discussions [3]; I'm not sure who you're addressing exactly. I didn't move the article. I just think "thermodynamical" is inferior to the more common "thermodynamic." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nobody Ent (talk • contribs) 19:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Why should I avoid pronouns? You = you-all = ya'll. Second person plural. I'm addressing the editors that this move discussion is aimed at. Who are you addressing? Wikipedia is not edited by robots. SBHarris 19:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Because pronouns require antecedents to be clear as to what (or who) they mean. Nobody Ent 19:44, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

No really. Very often the referent is clear in context, as when you address a crowd with a bullhorn ("Are you going to take it anymore?" "Who're you talking to?" says some boob in the front row....). On article TALK pages, when you want to address a person, you use their username. Anything else is addressed to the reader, or else it would pesumably be posted on the user talkpage not the article talkpage (which is public). SBHarris 19:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

If everyone operated that way it would be understandable, but not everyone does... frequently I see singular "you" referring to the previous poster. I really wasn't sure who you were addressing. Nobody Ent 23:26, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to merge alcohol and cortisol to ethanol

I think the article is referring to Ethanol, for eg. it says, "In one study, overnight urinary cortisol levels were taken from people who regularly drank a large amount of alcohol versus a small amount of alcohol." Seems like their talking about ethanol. What do you think about the proposal? Gsingh (talk) 04:58, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

It is referring to ethanol, but the merge discussion was (mistakenly) stuck on the alcohol talk page. The merge is a bad idea because ethanol is still a huge topic. There's more to ethanol than the bodily effects of chronic ethanol abuse-- that's a tiny fraction of "alcoholism," which is a tiny fraction of human ethanol use, which is a tiny fraction of what there is to know about ethanol the chemical. SBHarris 07:02, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Email?

Sorry to use this place for non-Wikipedia stuff, but do you have a working email address at the moment? I've been trying to send you an email to which I thought I'd get a response, but have received nothing. (If you simply didn't want to respond, or didn't have time to, that's okay; I'm just checking for technical malfunction, perhaps in the form of overly-zealous spam filters. The last attempt to send it was on Jan 29.) Thanks. Norman Yarvin (talk) 17:25, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I got your email. I have no idea how to disable javascript on my browser, and my last attempt to look at your blog still didn't go well. I'll try again today, but I suspect the math thing is going to be a killer for me, until I replace my antiquated IE6 (which is planned soon). Steve

SBHarris 19:11, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

ATP: Ionization in biological systems

I greatly appreciated your comments on the talk page related to ATP. The last sentence in the "Ionization in biological systems" seems incomplete, and since you understand this page better than most, I hoped maybe you could help (I can't figure out what they're trying to say!)

As I read the talk page I was wondering if you might be the person that might help me finally understand; it seems as though biologists (and perhaps chemists) learn about thermodynamics, but there seems to be a disconnect with modern quantum mechanics. With reference to "high energy bonds" there was discussion about the energy being (or not) like energy stored in a spring. The page then goes on to describe the ionization state of ATP as being 4-. I'm probably ridiculously naive in my understanding, but is it that these electrons (the 4-) that are riding along on the ATP are in a high energy state (ie bearing photons) which will be yielded upon hydrolysis? Or do I totally have my head...er..up somewhere? doctorwolfie (talk) 21:12, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The part you couldn't figure out was a simple vandalism (and a recent one) by an IP editor. If that happens when you read an article, go a few versions back to one by a username and see if the problem is gone. Then go up to see which IP added it (usually vandals are IPs or have red usernames, showing their TALK page is empty). To get rid of vandalisms, just go back to the last "good" version of an article, hit "edit this page" and then just save with the comment that you're "RVV" (reverting vandals). I did much the same. That wiped out your small "fix" but that was to a sentence that had been misplaced anyway (in physical properties).

The question of energy is complicated. All chemical bonds (a good article to read) require energy to break, or they wouldn't be bonds. You have to pull them apart, and that takes a force working through a distance. This doesn't change in QM. The "high energy bonds" in ATP still take energy to BREAK, but you get more energy BACK when new bonds are formed between the hydrolyzed phosphate and water molecules. So net energy is released. The same happens with gasoline and oxygen--- it takes energy to break them up, but you get more back when the new bonds form in CO2 and H2O.

ATP(4-) means most of the ATP rides around in a water solution ionized 4 times, so 4 of those protons are gone, leaving 4 oxygens with a pair of electrons and a negative charge. This is like any polyatomic anion (sulfate, nitrate, phosphate). THe counteranion here could be anything but there's a magnesium (2+) coiled up and physically associated with the polyionized ATP, so the best formula for it is really Mg-ATP(2-), which as a complex is really only twice ionized. When you get solid ATP in a bottle from some chem company, something else positive has to balance those charges, and it can be Na+, H+, or another Mg(2+). In the cell, these are counterions in solution.

These electrons are not particularly in a high energy state-- when salts or acids dissolve in water, they can liberate energy (get hot) or even suck energy up (get cold). Those self cooling ice packs called instant cold backs that are full of some salt and water, which absorb heat when the salt disolves (or when it crystallizes out). This is driven by the entropy term in the G = H-TS, so as long as S is in the right direction to drive G, the H can be positive or negative.

So to make this short, it's not the bond that is broken when the H+ or cation comes off the ATP as it dissolves that provides most of the free energy, although I suppose that would be possible to do, if the cell had a way to seqester solid salts from dissolved ones. As it doesn't, it is forced to use a reaction in which both products and reactants are already dissolved, and that's the hydrolysis of an already-ionized ATP. SBHarris 23:33, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time; I don't know why my brain so obstinately refuses to make peace with thermodynamics....I read the article on chemical bonds too, which does help somewhat. Maybe this is part of my midlife crisis! doctorwolfie (talk) 12:21, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I can help you on the thermo. I’m reminded of the guy who said “thermodynamics is easy—I’ve learned it a dozen times.”

Basically it all comes down to the idea that all type of energy with the exception of thermal energy, are perfectly interconvertable, and they are all equal to (force*distance). The special status of thermal energy is due to the fact that it can’t be perfectly converted back into usable energy because it is present as kinetic or potential energy in particles that are traveling in random directions. Thus, in order to get any of it out as convertible work (free energy meaning “free to be converted”), you have to let the particles cool or expand, and then some of the energy is trapped in an even larger space. That’s all we mean when we say entropy increases. It increases when concentrations drop as things diffuse, when gasses expand, when things cool as heat flows from hot to cold. All these are equivalent processes, and you can even get some heat to convert to work if you’re willing to pay a concentration price for it (see concentration cell for a fascinating example of such a device: it converts heat to work and gets colder, but the price you pay is a concentration gradient must disappear instead of a temperature gradient). There’s always an entropy price for making any heat disappear, and it always leaves entropy greater than before in the universe.

Any chemical reaction or any process will go against the energy gradient if there’s an entropy gradient driving it. Water evaporates off skin and takes heat energy to do it—that’s an energy-absorbing process (a heat absorbing process) but it happens anyway driven by the increasing entropy of water turning to gas. Water will even dissociate spontaneously into a little H2 and O2, so long as these are in VERY low concentration, since the low concentration (a large entropy change per mole to make a low concentration product) drives the process the “wrong” way energetically.

With ATP, you can get FREE energy going from ATP to ADP+P (in water) or you can get free energy going the other direction! The reason is that making a product that absorbs ambient heat can be done if you pay the concentration price. It’s all dependent on concentration like any chemical reaction. If you go in the way that absorbs heat to make chemical potential energy (generally toward ATP) then the concentrations have to greatly favor ADP and P so they push the reaction toward a very low concentration of ATP. All that is paying the entropy cost. SBHarris 23:45, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm still not sure I get it...but you're forcing me to beleive you! Many thanks! doctorwolfie (talk) 10:34, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Mediation Cabal: Request for participation

Dear Sbharris: Hello. This is just to let you know that you've been mentioned in the following request at the Mediation Cabal, which is a Wikipedia dispute resolution initiative that resolves disputes by informal mediation.

The request can be found at Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/27 February 2012/Wikipedia:Verifiability.

Just so you know, it is entirely your choice whether or not you participate. If you wish to do so, and we'll see what we can do about getting this sorted out. At MedCab we aim to help all involved parties reach a solution and hope you will join in this effort.

If you have any questions relating to this or any other issue needing mediation, you can ask on the case talk page, the MedCab talk page, or you can ask the mediator, Mr. Stradivarius, at their talk page. MedcabBot (talk) 14:11, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Modified Chart of the Nuclides

I know I've been a pain in the neck to you (pun intended), but I've got a file that I've uploaded File:Modified chart of the nuclides.jpg that I'm trying to get into my sandbox, along with references to the Chart of the Nuclides and the chart efforts of JWB and just Granpa and LANL for consolidation and references purposes, and I'm not getting it done. So I wonder if you could look at it for any Isotope interrelationship and other purposes and see if you think it has any information value. Its where I get my information for my stability trend lines discussion of the various isotopes because I can see them in the chart. I know you're interested in information in this area and this chart format is better at showing the significant factors. It also lead me to the idea of the creation of individual element stability profile charts that I have like the 82Pb lead stability profile chart that I submitted and that was deleted. The data is that in the element isotope files. It's only the format that helps show up the significant features of the data relative to the element stability properties. So would appreciate your opinion on whether it can be informative in Wikipedia. Thank You.WFPM (talk) 23:55, 1 March 2012 (UTC) PS I don't know what's going on, but when I send it to you it comes out magnified!! It's normal in my contribution listings. Ah--the mysteries of life.

(talk page stalker) I've turned it into a file link by inserting a colon before the File: prefix. See WP:EIS: in the absence of either a Type or Size, the image is show at maximum size. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:07, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Well thank you!WFPM (talk) 19:14, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

replaced Vanadium image in the template-box

Hi Sbharris,

I prefer the V-disk as a better image. It is an FP-image, has a higher resolution, a scale too and has a much more better image quality. You can add the image of the V cuboids in the article, but not as a replacement in the template box. That is my opinion. Best regards, --Alchemist-hp (talk) 09:12, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

For SBHarris

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvqCtaBkyyE — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.15.142.228 (talk) 21:29, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Talk:John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories#Reliable sources

If you have the time, would you mind offering an opinion regarding reliable sources and the attribution of opinions and statements provided by Warren Commission critics? Thanks! Location (talk) 01:18, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Could you perhaps move heat to heat (physics)

I think this would best be done following a formal WP:RM discussion. That can also bring in other parties who may not have noticed the talk page discussion. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:59, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

User:Thehelpfulbot

Hi Sbharris,

I don't want to come across as hostile, but User talk:Thehelpfulbot redirects to my user talk page, User talk:Thehelpfulone, and as such I would prefer if you left a message on my talk page - instead of my bot's!

With regards to the permission for this task, this was a bot request made at Wikipedia:Bot_requests#tag_a_large_number_of_templates_for_tfd, and my bot was approved for tasks that are similar to this, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Thehelpfulbot_12. I am partially at fault for presuming that the TfD nomination had already been made, but I am not running an unapproved bot.

I have left a message for Mabdul asking him to create the TfD nomination.

I hope this clears up this misunderstanding! Have a great day

The Helpful One 22:00, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for providing the link for approval for your bot to tag templates for deletion at request. This is closer to what it was approved for, but one can argue that that approval (link above) was for "tasks such as *this*" with the *this* being a request to mass-tag a lot of orphan templates for deletion, and you got approval for tasks like that, which aren't very controversial (although even orphaned templates do not automatically REQUIRE deletion and substitution, see link below. It's a case-by-case thing depending on how likely they are to be used ever). Then, we got "bot-use creep" and the next request you got was for the deletion of 100+ element userbox templates that are not only NOT orphaned, but each of which is transcluded in pages that all have tens of thousands of page-views a month. Not the same. None of these are required to be substituted instead of transcluded, by the MoS rules for this. Indeed there are many reasons to transclude single templates, especially complicated ones that hold rarely-change into in article that are subject to vandalism, and that are one of set that need some amount of consistance for presentation of numerical information. The objective of community discussion could have been achieved just as well by tagging ONE of them, not all 120. Now, it's a big mess, and you made it. Just because somebody requests your bot to do something, doesn't mean it's a wise thing for your bot to do. That's why it's you running the bot and not some J. Random Editor. You're supposed to exercise human discretion. SBHarris 00:47, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Ceruloplasmin and copper

Are you sure that is right? SpinningSpark 01:16, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Boron

Hi Sbharris, you added the rio tinto borax mine as nearly largest producer for borax in the world. The numbers for the US producers are withheld since 2005 but at that point the us was roughly producing one fifth of the world production. [4] The two company pages are a little vague in their statement. Do you think that there is somewhere a better source to quote at this place? Thanks --Stone (talk) 22:12, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Here's a Rio Tinto company page less vague: [5]. It gives one million tons a year of refined borates from the Mojave site (Rio Tinto of course owns many other sites in South America). That doesn't mean it's correct. Usually total world boron production is quoted as about 2 million tons of B203 equivalent, so that would make the Mojave/Boron site as about 50% of the world production. It's certainly the entire US/North America production.

A somewhat biased Turkish site that claims to keep track of world boron claims the US (which would be entirely this mine in California) produces 1/3rd of total boron production. [6]. That would still make this mine in Boron, CA the largest in the world, since Turkey's boron production sites are multiple. SBHarris 22:40, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! This looks strange compared to the numbers in the USGS, but it is credible and if several not that related references quote roughly the same than it's OK. --Stone (talk) 06:23, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Iodine

Iodine is multi-valant in the sense of quantum maechins. That is, it's shape definig and external orbit has many valance electrons, and thus is dense and blokcs EM well, since electrons are electrical. So, you mean monvalent is some ackoqwardly smilar medecine meaning, which is not what I mean, and is irrelevant for its radio interaction. It is because of it being multi-valant as it is called, if you read the value on it in wikipedia too. Other emeples of multivalant and radio opaque material would be: iodine, flourine, chlorine, carbon, silicon, lead and so on. Some materila which are not multivalant blocjk radio,. and that is if I understand coorectly always because they are dense in their molcular structure, even if the atoms themselves are not very dense. So, I think it should corrected back to what I wrote. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.210.181.158 (talk) 21:20, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

We are talking about X-rays, which do not behave like non-ionizing radiation. Their attenuation depends on electron density, total physical density, and (for photoelectric interactions) on a high order value of the atomic number Z. The last is the main reason why you can see bones so well in X-rays, even though they are only 1.5 times as dense. Carbon is NOT a good contrast agent. Educate yourself: [7] SBHarris 00:00, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

iodine again

Hello,

What? I wrote here, and you erased it. It wrote is respectable. I am a physicist, and I don't understand why a doctor is correcting me on physics. Now, why do you think iodine has a high electron density? And in what sense? It has a high electron surface area to an incoming wave. Because is has a lot of electron in a large radius. That is the multi-valant remark that I wrote. I fail to see why you erase it. Do you even know what a valance electron is? High electron density, happens, interestingly, to describe the metal bonds sometimes in atoms, that would block radio well, but, that is a more complicated phenomenon, which especially for iodine, is not interesting. Plus, has nothing to do with the number of electrons, maybe the number of electrons which are covalent, that is, participating in the molecular bonds between atoms, even if those don't happen to have a lot of valance electrons. One expects an clear explanation which isn't dodgy why iodine is radio-opaque. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.210.181.158 (talk) 11:49, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I am correcting you on this matter of physics because you don't seem to know the physics. Electron density means number of electrons per unit volume. It can apply to bonds, to atoms as a whole, and even to plasmas or solids as a whole--as in electrons per cm^3. It is the last two numbers (electrons per atomic volume and electrons per volume of material) that make the important contribution to Thomson scattering of X-rays. Not outer electrons and not electrons on the atomic surface. Every. Fucking. Electron. In. The. Atom. Right down to the most inner K electrons that are in 1s orbital that penetrate the nucleus. Is that clear enough? I don't care if you believe it, it is the physical fact. I have quoted you the text, and if you cannot grip it with your mind, I am sorry for you. SBHarris 17:30, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.