Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 July 14

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July 14

Julian lunar calendar

Is the Julian lunar calendar always Gregorian lunar minus 4 days from 2001 till this century changes? I can't find a Julian lunar calendar online besides one that only shows the luna XIV before Easter. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:06, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Ah, here it is: [1]. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 08:58, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Your source does not agree with the source quoted in Computus#Theory, which has a month beginning on 2 November (the intercalary month) followed by one beginning on 2 December at line 13). In your source there is a month beginning on 1 December with the one beginning on 31 December also having thirty days. The compilers didn't allow two thirty day months to begin in one Julian month. 92.8.217.19 (talk) 20:01, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

There's another inaccuracy in your source. The last three months on line 2 begin 4 October, 3 November, 2 December. The article says the intercalary month began on 3 December. This conflicts with its cited source, which gives 2 December. However, there's a more impressive secondary source, the printed Julian calendar.[2] This gives 4 October, 3 November, 3 December. The two tables are almost certainly copied from this: [3] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.8.217.19 (talk) 18:17, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Good catch. I wonder how that source I found screwed up. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:40, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Is it really true that vomit doesn't affect men as much as women in the tendency to vomit when others are vomiting?

A long time ago, I had a physiology instructor who said that one would vomit when one saw others vomit for an evolutionary reason that the food might be tainted. Then, a girl suggested something along the lines of "If I vomit in front of my husband, then will he also vomit?" Then, the instructor said, "No, it doesn't affect men as much." Recently, I tried looking up the web to see if I could find any evidence. But nope, I can't find it. Is there a difference between men and women in the tendency to vomit when others are vomiting? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:26, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Like you, my search for any kind of confirmation or refutation of this claim through a reliable source in medical/beahvioural science literature has turned up zilch. I don't like to speculate here, even in the absence of any kind of sourcing (actually, especially in that context), but in this case I am going to go out on a limb and say that you are right to be skeptical here: I can't see it as likely that either substantial research or even speculation has been conducted in this area by either physiologists or behavioural scientists. It's entirely possible your instructor was sharing some impressionistic opinion, based on his limited experience or even just confirmation bias about the supposedly less hardy stomachs of women working in medical fields (which assertion has been around forever, even as the minds of most people who work in that field boggle at the notion).

That said, it's not outside the realm of possibility; I've heard speculation in the past that the social vomiting reflex is best explained in evolutionary terms by the possibility that it was meant to help evacuate poisons from the systems of hunter-gatherers. I'm skeptical of that theory, because emulation-induced vomiting itself would have significant medical cost for someone vomiting needlessly (dehydration, for example, which in the hunter-gatherer context would not always be easy to immediately remedy). But it's at least possible, and if that is the evolutionary root of the instinct, its worth noting that (from what we know of hunter-gatherer societies), women did tend to have a more active role in collecting flora. That said, most all members of the few hunter-gatherer cultures remaining in the world today suggest that most all members of a band are familiar with the toxicity of most every species within their range of foraging (I recall, for example, Jared Diamond relating this observation from his discussions with the remaining bands on the Indonesian plateau.

I appreciate that is a whole lot of speculation with zero truly useful sourcing, but I think it at least gives you a fair impression of just how much certainty we can have on the matter (not much) lacking any real research. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:35, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

same. my 2 cents, or rather 4, though:

• women have more fatty reserves than men so vomitting (wasting a meal) cost them less,
• men are heavier so it takes more poison to make them ill,
• traditional culture assigne different food to different sex, and this is still true
• last but not least, poison may affect foetus much more dramatically than grown-ups, vomitting is seen as a sign of pregnancy (and women in a band tend to be pregnant at the same time)

all this translates into: it makes evolutionary sense for women to vomit more.

Gem fr (talk) 06:07, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

My 5 pence, When I was a youngster any hint or sound of someone vomiting would elicit a similar reaction in me. When I took up nurse training I witnessed patients vomiting on a regular basis and quickly became accustomed to it. The experience has put me in good stead for the rest of my 7 decades. There are many causes for vomiting, not just toxins, so I am not convinced by the "get rid of the toxins" theory. Richard Avery (talk) 07:40, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

There is no discussion that some toxins (or toxic level of, say, alcohol, that do NOT cause nausea under low impregnation) cause nausea, and that it makes sense to vomit to get rid of it. And no discussion either that training can get rid of reflex that turns into nuisance for a professional routinely exposed to circonstance usually rare for ordinary people, but this cannot be used to dismiss a fact that apply to them. Motion sickness: "The most common hypothesis for the cause of motion sickness is that it functions as a defense mechanism against neurotoxins. etc." Now, there may be others causes, for sure, but it makes sense to use a routine defense behavior when you don't know what's happening.Gem fr (talk) 10:56, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

The view alone certainly does not affect men or women. There are lots of movies that contain such "acts", some even exessively. The smell however affects most civilized humans - men and women alike i believe. However every human is capable to get used to revolting smells. Pathologists for example are by profession used to smells that probably would let normal people faint. Similar men often seem to vomit when confronted with "filled" Baby Diapers unless they get used to do (irony on) that "mom's job"(irony off). So in conclusion it doesnt seem a natural thing at all to be affected by someone else vomit or smells. Its mostly socialized (learned) behavior really. --Kharon (talk) 22:03, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Kharon, I almost didn't respond here because I couldn't find a definitive piece of research on this, but I still think you've turned reality on its head with your assumption here. Most people do in fact have a strong gag reflex in response to vomiting; regardless of culture and whether they are ever explicitly taught to view the act as disgusting, most have a visceral reaction to the act (and to the excretion of bodily fluids generally) that is innate, not learned. There is, however, great variability in how much people react and some just are not bothered at all (I would suspect you may be one of them, given your outlook here). You are correct that conditioning can change the degree of response, but it's usually in the other direction (a person becoming habitualized to the act and thus not having a strong response, rather than people being innately not bothered and then learning to be physically upset by it). For my own part, I was never really one to get nauseous from visual or auditory stimuli, and once I had participated in top-down dissections of a cadaver (early in my study of physiology in my academic career), most everything biological seemed trivial by comparison, and I've rarely had so much as twitch of reaction (at least vomit wise), so you are somewhat correct in that this is a strange area where the psychological and the purely physically reflexive intertwine in peculiar ways.

It's worth noting that all of this interfaces with the psychology (and biopsychology) of disgust, which even more broadly is a curious area of behaviour. Many aspects of disgust are conditioned in childhood; any parent will tell you that up until a certain age, most children hoover-up almsot any food put in front of them, if hungry enough; they do have favourites and some are picky even at an early age, but they are generally very adventurous in what they will accept (or shove into their own gobs if left unattended!). Then, around the age where a child is becoming truly mobile and independent, they go through a period where their dietary preferences contract significantly (in some cases setting for life). The theory here is that, this being the period when a child in a traditional hunter-gatherer context would begin to have the ability to sometimes select their own foods, it's best that at this age they would begin to create two separate categories for "acceptable" and "unacceptable" foods, given the potential for poisoning. It is believed that this has become the basis for cultural differences in cuisine and that this has further fed into the creation of distinct cultures in general (insofar as an inability to "break bread" can create surprisingly large gaps between groups [4]; and of course, historically and even in to today, some people will go so far as to classify other people as "not human" due to their dietary choices). What's more, some research has even suggested a strong link between the degree to which an individual will classify food choices which they are not used to as "disgusting" and their broader social views; those with more closed diets also seem to be more willing to classify harmless sexual acts that they do not participate in (homosexuality, for example) as "disgusting" or abhorrent and are more likely to be conservative or fundamentalist in other social beliefs. Furthermore, this high/low level of general disgust may be somewhat inheritable. [5], [6].

I know that second paragraph is a bit of a divergence, but I think it's food for thought on the main inquiry here; disgust is neither generated entirely by culture or innate propensity alone; it's a case of neuropsychological development and epigenetics working in bizarre ways (even by the peculiar standards of human behvioural phenomena). On that one little point, though, I still think you are wrong, and making assumptions contrary to the general established consensus of whether it is innate for most people to have a reflex to vomitting; take 10 people from 10 different countries and put them in a room with someone vomiting, and I bet you most of them will be fighting against that reflex to varying degrees, even if they never explicitly thought about whether or not the act is "gross". Snow ^{let's rap} 23:21, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Btw. Best ever "Wanna sip?" --Kharon (talk) 22:13, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

If men do tolerate vomit better than women, that just supports the theory that all men are dogs. :-) StuRat (talk) 23:40, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Snow Rise do you know Surströmming? Its very famous for forcing anyone not familiar with it to instantly vomit! Also read Fermented fish to see the many examples in different countries. That alone is prove enough for me that this is an entirely conditioned phenomenon. --Kharon (talk) 00:08, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

The evidence you provide in your first two sentences there (aside from being highly impressionistic) stands in diametric contrast to the conclusion you raise from it, and from your previous comment. If most people have an automatic reflex towards highly fermented foods (and I agree that they do) and generally only lack this visceral response if they have "acquired the taste" for its consumption, then that is evidence that the emesis reflex is the somewhat instinctual response, and having no such response is the result of conditioning. Exactly the opposite of your original assertion. In my post, I was not saying that you were wrong that experience can qualify the baseline response; I'm saying you've turned the direction in which those conditioned responses run on their head. People learn to control the instinct to gag or vomit in the context of stimulation by certain smells--they don't learn to want to vomit in that context. Quite the opposite to your assertion that they undermine that conventional assumption, those cuisines that you cite reinforce it. Snow ^{let's rap} 01:53, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

It is true women are more prone to vomiting in response to various stimuli, plus they mirror others feelings a bit more than men. You can find out stuff on the web by googling the appropriate medical terms 'emesis gender' to get the medical texts. Dmcq (talk) 00:07, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

That only brings up very specific differences found in these medical studies. This does not prove or even hint a general gender difference. --Kharon (talk) 00:17, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Could you name one study of anything that satisfies your requirements in that it showed up something everywhere instead of in the particular cases tested? Dmcq (talk) 13:34, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Like the others, I have no links, only anecdotal evidence. My wife handles this much better than I with our children. Not sure which of us is an outlier if either. I suspect that any variations are more highly correlated with experience the gender. SRICE_{13 (TALK | EDITS)}

Appetite suppressant to to point of starvation and death

Are there any substances that completely suppress appetite to the point of starvation and death? Have there been any experiments on rats/mice or other animals that I can read about? Thanks for your time.

As an example, see Brain_stimulation_reward#Strength_of_drive: 'Experiments have shown rats to forgo food to the point of starvation in order to work for brain stimulation [of the Lateral hypothalamus] or intravenous cocaine'. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:41, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Anorexia nervosa, anorectic Gem fr (talk) 11:51, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Re the 'rats on cocaine' experiment: I read or heard (on radio) some time earlier this month that the original experiments in the 1960s (see your first cited article's Reference 9 here) were later discredited. The rats – members of a highly social species – were effectively placed in extended "solitary confinement" in totally featureless enclosures offering no mental stimulation whatever, and thus were in a highly abnormal mental state when offered the cocaine. When repeated by Bruce K. Alexander as part of his Rat Park study in parallel with modified experiments giving the rats a more normal environment including contact with other rats, the latter moderated their cocaine use and functioned reasonably normally. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.206.219.214 (talk) 14:52, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Pfft, extroverts. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:01, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Note that it would need to go beyond a lack of appetite for people to stop eating. That is, knowing they would die without food, they would force it down if they possibly could, so you would need something like ipecac, to prevent people from keeping food down. See emetic. Not true of other animals, though. StuRat (talk) 14:55, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Appetite suppressants like amphetamines have a checkered history and are ineffective in the long run. What is the long run for an appetite suppressant? Three months at the most, but this also varies with individuals. You can think of appetite suppressants which are almost universally also psycho-stimulants if you take coffee. It is a psychostimulant and an appetite suppressant if you never drank coffee in your life or had at least a year of abstinence. Many of your brain cells are covered with receptors which are small areas on the boundary of the cells (cell walls) and if you drink a cup of coffee all those receptors and there are zillions of them become excited and send signals inside the cells. The next thing they do--some of them disappear inside the cell wall, or you can say the caffeine you drank pushed them inside. Tomorrow you drink another cup and more receptors dive in. The process continues to the point that very few receptors are left to monitor what you drank. Stop drinking coffee and over time some of the receptors, perhaps all of them eventually will come up to the surface. Amphetamines which are used as attention stimulants are most likely act on the same receptors but their affinity may be different, higher or lower. You can do research on that in Wikipedia yourself. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 18:23, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

That's not how caffeine works. It's an antagonist, not an agonist or a reuptake inhibitor. Specifically, it blocks adenosine receptors. If the receptors were to be "pushed inside the cell", it would be like you were always on caffeine.

How the body adapts to caffeine I'm not really sure — it could make more adenosine, or more receptors.

I'm not sure whether it's an appetite suppressant or not. Our article mentions that kola nuts were used to suppress hunger pangs; that's the only reference I can find in our article to appetite suppression. --Trovatore (talk) 20:11, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

• To take the question literally, yes, there are definitely drugs that can suppress appetite to the point of starvation and death, namely, drugs that cause severe nausea. Many of the drugs used in cancer chemotherapy, for example, have this characteristic. None of them are addictive or rewarding, to be sure, but the question didn't say anything about that. Looie496 (talk) 03:16, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

"Smartphones Hijack Cognitive Capacity" -exact quote

In this Medscape article[7], not sure if it is accessible by everyone, you can read: "Having a smartphone nearby reduces cognitive capacity, even when the phone is turned off, new research shows." "The mere presence of their smartphone was enough to reduce their cognitive capacity." "The study was published online April 3 in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research." I smell telepathy here. I think Mark Zuckerberg might be interested. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 23:20, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Telepathy isn't necessary, as the phone being nearby distracts you by thinking about it. Imagine having a fire-breathing dragon nearby, wouldn't that be distracting, even when it's asleep  ? StuRat (talk) 23:36, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, @StuRat, how about this: "The researchers found that the mere presence of a smartphone adversely affected available cognitive capacity, even when participants were successful at sustaining attention, were not using their phone, and did not report thinking about the phone. These cognitive effects were strongest in those who reported greater smartphone dependence. It's not that participants were distracted because they were getting notifications on their phones," said Dr Ward in a press release. "The mere presence of their smartphone was enough to reduce their cognitive capacity." --AboutFace 22 (talk) 00:56, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

They may not be aware of it, but still have part of their attention spent listening for notification tones. I don't think we can turn that off automatically when the device is turned off. The real test would be to have the phone close or far from them, in a double blind way. If it still takes their attention, only when near, even though they don't know it's nearby, then something strange really is happening. StuRat (talk) 01:47, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, even a cursory review of the article that the OP references demonstrates that the researchers believe their results reflect an impact upon cognitive load for participants who knowingly had their devices on their person, even when they knew these devices were turned off. There's not even the slightest suggestion of ESP or some other "spooky" explanation; the researchers clearly felt that participants treat their phone a little reflexively in that some portion of their mind is still "on reserve" to interact with the device if it is on their person (even if it is off), which in itself is not altogether surprising. Even then, it's just one study, and not published in a journal I would expect to have the most rigorous of standards for peer review of controls, so the results could be inflated and at the very least would need to be independently replicated. But again, if true, not earth-shattering and certainly not evidence for clairvoyance. Snow ^{let's rap} 02:28, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes just because someone did not say they were thinking about the phone doesn't mean they weren't at some level. Nil Einne (talk) 06:49, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• WTF is a "smarch phone"? μηδείς (talk) 22:24, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• Where do you see that misspelling ? StuRat (talk)