Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2015 December 22

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 22

Hospital pain management and heroin addicition

One documentary I heard (sorry, forgot the name) claimed that there was a change made in US hospital practices, where pain level was added as a "vital statistic", along with blood pressure, temperature, etc., and that this meant hospital staff then started asking everyone what their pain level was, on a scale of 1 to 10, and prescribing pain meds to lower the level to zero, even when the patient didn't ask for them or complain about the pain. This in turn, was said to have caused a spike in addiction to painkillers, and, once the addicted can no longer get or afford prescriptions, they then turn to illegal drugs like heroin. So, my questions:

1) Is the part about the "pain being listed as a vital stat" true ?

If so:

2) When was this change made ?

3) What justification was given for this change ?

4) Is there any evidence that the pharmaceutical companies pushed it through to increase sales ?

5) Has there been any attempt to remove pain from the list of vital stats, to reduce unnecessary prescription of pain meds, and thus the subsequent abuse and addiction ?

6) Do we have an article on this issue ? StuRat (talk) 03:54, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

1. Yes pain management is considered almost a basic right when seeking medical care and the 1-10 scale is used but it's really a "yes/no" question. Pain treatment is up to the patient but medical providers won't deny pain relief as long as it's not contrary to the immediate health needs of the patient. An opiate OD will not get opiates and they will give opiate agonists to reverse the effects despite the pain it causes. Even police are being trained to administer opiate agonists as first responders. For heroin addicts, that treatment can be very painful and also cause violent reactions (their high is destroyed).

2 It's been in place for a while and recognized by the AMA. Note that this created a conflict where drug seekers would go to emergency room to get a fix. They may receive a fast acting pain reliever but doctors and medical staff are trained to identify drug seekers. This is almost a direct result from DEA efforts to make seeking pain relief a crime. The AMA came down on the side of a clinical decision rather than a moral/legal one.

3 Treating pain is part of the oath doctors take. Why wouldn't hey make patients more comfortable if it didjeopardize their health?

4 I don't think so. It's mostly generic drugs and very cheap. The DEA has more control by limiting the amount of drugs available. For example, why is the U.S. nearly the sole user of hydrocodone?

5 prescriptions are rare from the emergency department. They treat vital stats/pain at the ER and prescriptions beyond 5-10 days are rare. Refills of opiates have been eliminated (even hydrocodone needs new, written prescriptions).

6 Pain management clinics would be the logical place to look. That's not Emergency care where vital stats are taken and addressed. Most states track pres criptions and diversions. Pharmacists that fill prescriptions are also in the loop and doctors that have large diversions, large amounts of early refills or patients that seek multiple providers can be tracked. Overdose deaths are also tracked. The largest growing group of deaths is the elderly that are prescribed pain and anxiety medications. Young people that steal pharmaceuticals from parents or get them from diverted sources is another issue (after the Baltimore riots, the murder rate skyrocketed due to drug turf wars from stolen doses from CVS and other pharmacies).

In short, treating pain isn't necessarily the issue it's controlling diversion to illegitimate channels. Treating pain at the A and E department, where the "pain scale" is used is the smallest part. --DHeyward (talk) 05:15, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Also, to be more clear, I think the premise outlined by your documentary is rather preposterous. It's kind of like arguing illegal recreational marijuana use is the result of medical marijuana. I'm sure there are plenty of illicit marijuana users that say they have a medical allotment but it's not enough. The timing of laws and common sense though is that the drug user developed their habit outside of the medical system and use the medical system to supplement their illicit use. I'd bet paychecks that heroin addicts became addicts long before they were prescribed opiates by a doctor and if they start seeking prescribed opiates it's to supplement their illegal use. Just like there are extremely few methadone users that weren't heroin addicts. Methadone wasn't a gateway drug to heroin, rather heroin led them to methadone. If a kids path to heroin was through prescription opiates, it's highly unlikely it was his prescription that caused it. Nor did he legally obtain beer at 16 or marijuana or cigarettes. --DHeyward (talk) 05:48, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, studies have looked into this, and they don't find a link between painkiller prescription and drug additiction. Here's a good one, and the important quote is: "Conventional wisdom suggests that the abuse potential of opioid analgesics is such that increases in medical use of these drugs will lead inevitably to increases in their abuse. The data from this study with respect to the opioids in the class of morphine provide no support for this hypothesis. The present trend of increasing medical use of opioid analgesics to treat pain does not appear to be contributing to increases in the health consequences of opioid analgesic abuse." Smurrayinchester 10:29, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

That study is less than compelling. A lack of correlation does not imply a lack of causation. Also, anecdotally, stories about these things often involve a transition to non-medical use years after the original prescription. Wnt (talk) 12:50, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

As far as I can see the general consensus is moving more towards the conclusions of the Rat Park experiment. The vast majority of people will not get addicted if they have reasonable circumstances and the heroin was for pain even with fairly long term use. Dmcq (talk) 13:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

"Vast majority" doesn't mean it's not a problem. If only 10% of the people prescribed pain killers become addicts, that's still a serious problem. StuRat (talk) 17:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Nowhere near that, if they were that way inclined they would almost certainly have sought out something like that before. However it does look as though there is at least 10% of the population who at times seek out some way of blotting their lives out whether it is through alcohol or drugs or doing something else stupid. I do wonder how much of it is due to how our society works and whether such problems are reasonably avoidable. Dmcq (talk) 19:15, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Falcon 9 first stage

How high did the first stage go on its flyback trajectory before starting to descend again? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amble (talk • contribs) 04:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

SpaceX's full launch webcast is here. Starting at 1:50 Michael Hammersley gives a short description of the vehicle and the flight.

"The first stage is what gets the entire rocket up to about a hundred kilometers in altitude. At that point the second stage separates and continues taking the eleven Orbcomm satellites up to low earth orbit, which is moving at about eight kilometers per second, or eight times the speed of a rifle bullet. The first stage will actually continue its trajectory and reach an apogee -- that's a maximum height -- of about two hundred kilometers before, and we are very excited about this, before coming back to land at Landing Zone One on Cape Canaveral ground."

-- ToE 05:10, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

And SpaceX's Background on Tonight's Launch says that in previous flights with descents to over-ocean landing tests the stage reached 210 km. (Next to last paragraph of the "SpaceX Reusability Progress to Date" section.) -- ToE 06:13, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! --Amble (talk) 07:19, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Soyuz TMA-19M

How long did the Soyuz TMA-19M mission (or any Soyuz mission to the ISS on average) last, starting from the time the astronauts entered the capsule until they left?

I'm just curious as to how long they had to be cooped up in there. 08:10, 22 December 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:243:D02:7A90:C0C0:8866:8CA3:7723 (talk)

A bit over eleven hours.

Soyuz TMA-19M (last week's launch which delivered Yuri Malenchenko, Timothy Kopra, & Timothy Peake to the ISS) achieved a four orbit fast rendezvous, so they were in space for about six hours from launch to docking. From our article:

Soyuz TMA-19M was launched atop of a Soyuz-FG rocket at 11:03 GMT on 15 December 2015 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. Following the launch, the Soyuz spacecraft successfully achieved orbital insertion 9 minutes later and began its 4-orbit journey to the Space Station. Unusually, while docking, the Kurs docking navigation system failed, and a manual docking had to be performed by Yuri Malenchenko. This delayed docking with the ISS (international space station) by 10 minutes. The Soyuz docked with the ISS at 17:33 GMT the same day. The crew then boarded the ISS at 19:58 GMT.

So that gives 8 hours 55 minutes from launch of the Soyuz to boarding the ISS, but does not tell us how long they spent in the Soyuz prior to launch.

The all-things-space website NASASpaceFlight.com has a detailed article on the flight here but it doesn't give the Soyuz boarding time.

Their forums have live play-by-play reporting and commentary for major space events, and here is the one for TMA-19M. This series of posts report the bus arriving at the pad and the crew getting off and posing on the steps of the tower and then ascending in the elevator, with the note "Crew should be entering the capsule now." at 07:37 (UTC-01:00 default forum time) or 08:37 GMT or T-2 hours 26 minutes, for a total time from boarding the Soyuz to boarding the ISS of about 11 hours 21 minutes. -- ToE 15:23, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Soyuz TMA-08M back in March 2013 was the first flight to utilize the four orbit, six hour fast rendezvous. Previous flights would take two days to rendezvous with the ISS, and that is still the fallback plan if the fast rendezvous isn't practical.

Three and a half months ago Soyuz TMA-18M launched on September 2, 2015 04:37:42 UTC and docked 51 hours later at September 4, 2015 07:42:00 UTC. The NSF article says that the fast-track rendezvous "was cancelled due to the current altitude of the Station" and implies that a fast rendezvous would have been possible but would have been pushing the limits of the Soyuz performance. This ESA blog post says much the same.

Soyuz TMA-12M launched on March 2014 intending to make a fast rendezvous but they missed a course-correction burn due to an attitude control problem, so they reverted to the two day rendezvous. Here is the NSF article on that flight, which has this to say about fast rendezvous:

"The desire to dock to the ISS after just six hours stems from the fact that spending two days in the cramped interior of the Soyuz along with two other crewmates is known to be a stressful and uncomfortable time for astronauts and cosmonauts, many of whom are suffering from symptoms of space sickness at the same time. ... Such a fast rendezvous was never attempted before [TMA-08M] as it requires extremely precise orbital adjustments from the ISS, and extremely precise orbital insertion by the Soyuz-FG booster, which was only deemed possible following a study conducted last year, which showed that such accuracy was achievable with the existing Soyuz-FG booster and modernized Soyuz TMA-M series spacecraft."

The Soyuz spacecraft does have an orbital module with 5 m³ living space and a toilet, so they are not stuck in the launch and reentry capsule the entire time. -- ToE 16:16, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed response. I really appreciate it. 08:44, 24 December 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:243:D02:7A90:C56E:4B66:3A1B:23A (talk)

Mysterious Benoit Species Description

Hello! I am looking for the scientific description of Euphrictus squamosus on the web, but Benoit, the describer of Euphrictus squamosus, wrote a paper on it, the Etudes sur les Barychelidae du Centre Africain (Araneae - Orthognatha) II. - Leptopelmatinae nouveaux, but it is in French! (Also I cannot download it- maybe it is a book?) Can anyone give me a scientific description of Euphrictus squamosus in English (or at least the English translation of Benoit's description)? Thank you for reading, Megaraptor12345 (talk) 12:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I suppose you already know it's a species of tarantula. Benoit's paper is in a journal not in a book but I couldn't find anywhere where it would be available for download. I suppose you've got the journal reference. There are stubs at the Dutch nl:Euphrictus squamosus, Swedish sv:Euphrictus squamosus and Portuguese pt:Euphrictus squamosus which do not say anything more than that it is a tarantula and that it was described by Benoit. Contact Basemetal here 13:03, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Our article tarantula lists all of the sub-families including Selenogyrinae (African tarantulas). But that's a red-link. However, we have List of Theraphosidae species - which includes several spiders discovered by Benoit in 1965 - and there we have Euphrictus squamosus listed under Selenogyrinae. But sadly, that's also a red-link, so English Wikipedia doesn't have an article on that. Wikipedia is surprisingly lacking in articles about african tarantulas. SteveBaker (talk) 16:17, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Searching for just Euphrictus in google, I found Tarantupedia.com...yes, there is an entire Wiki devoted to tarantulas! Anyway, it has an article on Euphrictus squamosus here - but it contains very little information. It references the same french language article - and suggests that it was originally classified as Zophopelma squamosa. Our List of Theraphosidae species says that Euphrictus is the senior synonym for Zophopelma - so we should use Euphrictus. SteveBaker (talk)

Trying another tack, I did a search on the "book" title, and discovered a proper bibliography for it - it was a 6 page article published in "Revue de Zoologie et Botanique africaines." - issue 71 pages 297-303. That journal has undergone several name changes over the years...and was eventually called "The Journal of Afrotropical Zoology (JAZ)" - that journal went bust in 2011 - and now is a part of "European Journal of Taxonomy (EJT)". But are there any archives online? SteveBaker (talk) 16:42, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Looking for archives of Revue de Zoologie et Botanique Africaines is annoying - there are archives held for editions prior to 1933 in a couple of places - and Google holds editions from the 1930's and 1970's - but nothing from the 1960's. Argh! SteveBaker (talk) 16:52, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

CONCLUSION: It appears that this spider was described in just one place - in a 6 page article in a French Journal - for which there appears to be no online copy. So I think you're going to have to start a library search for that journal and get a hold of an original copy. This may just be a job for a physical library reference desk! When you find it, you owe us articles on Selenogyrinae, Euphrictus and Euphrictus squamosus - and with at least that one reference! SteveBaker (talk) 16:52, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The OP could also try to use Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Resource_Request. Contact Basemetal here 17:03, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Volume of the observable universe

Sorry if it is obvious, but I was attempting to calculate the volume of the observable universe. I am assuming it is a sphere and if we can see as far as 13.82 billion light years away, then that is the radius of that sphere, so the volume would be = ¾*π*13,820,000,000³?

That means 6,219,210,624,381,820,000,000,000,000,000 cubic light years, or roughly 6.2 * 10³⁰ cubic light years? Anything wrong with my calculation/assumptions? --Lgriot (talk) 14:50, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

See observable universe for additional information.--Jayron32 15:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

... and just in case you are still confused after Jayron's appropriate link, there are three errors in your calculation. You assume that space is flat, you haven't taken into account expansion since the light started out, and you have a fraction upside down. Dbfirs 15:29, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

(ec) Our article says 4x10⁸⁰m³ - and references a Wolfram Alpha calculation - which says 4x10³² ly³. Your error is due to the expansion of space. While the age of the universe is only 13.8 billion years - over that time, space has expanded - and we can actually see 46.5 billion lightyears. Additionally, your formula for the volume of a sphere is incorrest - it's not 3/4 pi r³, it's 4/3 pi r³.

4/3 x pi x (46.5x10⁹)³ = 4.21 x 10³² ly³ - which agrees with Wolfram's answer and what is listed in our article. SteveBaker (talk) 15:44, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Oops for the 4/3! And of course I should have thought it was already explicitly calculated on the appropriate page. As per my assumption that space is flat, @Jayron32:, is the non-flatness of space likely to change the result very significantly?--Lgriot (talk) 16:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

No. Observations have not detected any deviation from perfect flatness. --Bowlhover (talk) 19:20, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, that was my mistake. I'd intended to write spacetime. Dbfirs 19:31, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

"No. Observations have not detected any deviation from perfect flatness." Is that weird? It just seems unlikely to me. 08:41, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it's true for 3-D space, however unlikely it sounds. You might like to read our article Shape of the universe. Dbfirs 15:08, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Photo details

?

What are those glowing blue spots on the Earth in the photo? Gaps in the clouds showing blue urban lighting? Thanks.--93.174.25.12 (talk) 15:21, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• I suspect that that those are lightning flashes...but there are several of them in the picture - which would seem to be a bit of a coincidence, unless the photo had a reasonably long exposure time. SteveBaker (talk) 15:46, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The EXIF suggests half a second. Nil Einne (talk) 16:20, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I would guess that these are urban lights - but they're not really blue. They just look blue compared to the yellow lights - which are sodium vapor lamps that constitute the majority of the older installed urban street lights in the United States and many other places.

The Space Station crew shoots Nikon cameras (a Nikon D4 in this instance). Nikon automatic white balance is notoriously cool (blue-tinted). So what you're probably seeing in those blue regions are cities with newer, more energy-efficient white lights that either use LED or other technologies. The digital photograph makes them appear visually blue. (Here are some example complaints on various web forums: Nikon DSLR AWB always "bad"; here is Ken Rockwell using the behavior for artistic purposes on the D3. I don't think Nikon's AWB is "bad" or "wrong" - in my opinion, it's actually more scientifically accurate - at the expense of aesthetically-pleasing warm tones like you see on, ahem, some other cameras. This is why I own a bunch of Nikon dSLRs - they have color accuracy good enough to fly on the Space Station! - but this "blue" tendency is a real behavior that Nikon photographers need to be aware of. For example... did you notice that the sun the moon also appears blue in this photograph?

I only know of one city that actually uses blue LEDs for its urban street lights: Shanghai - and only in the upscale downtown districts near Nanbei Elevated Road and Pudong New District. I'd be very interested if anyone else knows of other urban districts that use blue street lighting!

Nimur (talk) 16:19, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Our Color psychology#Blue public lighting article suggests some places in Glasgow and some train stations in Japan although the install date of the former makes me wonder if they used LEDs. (Our article seems incomplete on Japan, [1] seems to have more locations. And [2] makes me think it's not just train stations any more.) Nil Einne (talk) 16:28, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

They look like lightning to me. With an average of 40/s over the entire planet, the number in the shot looks reasonable. Bazza (talk) 16:34, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

It could be lightning - I can't specifically rule it out - but the photo is taken of an area during pre-dawn, an exceptionally unusual time to have a large number of lightning storms.

Here is NASA Earth Observatory's story on detecting lightning from ISS, including some great photographs for comparison.

If we wanted to, we could look up the date and time of the photograph, and then pull up archived weather data (thanks to NOAA)and even archived lightning strike positions from the National Lightning Detection Network [3], and verify whether there were strong storms during the image capture. (There may have been storms).

Nimur (talk) 16:39, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Following the links back to the photo's source, the picture was taken from a point above 29.4° N, 110.7° W (which is in the Mexican state of Sonora) on 2015-08-10 at 07:58:25 GMT. Note that sunrise at ground level from that position on that date would be at 12:48 GMT, almost 5 hours later. Even at, say, Kansas City, sunrise would only be at 6:27 AM CDT, which is 11:27 GMT. So this is not middle-of-the-night weather, not pre-dawn, even though from orbital altitude the sun is visible.

I believe the brightest city in the photo, just above center, is Dallas and the highway running "down" through the center of the photo is Interstate 20; running to the right from Dallas is Interstate 35, leading to Austin and then (brighter) San Antonio, with Houston just "above" it and nearer the coast. In that case the brightest city to the left of Dallas is Oklahoma City, with Tulsa just "above" it; and then I'd say the line of blue lights is a row of thunderstorms across eastern Kansas and southern Missouri—an area well known for violent weather—with Kansas City just beyond them. It's harder to identify the foreground locations since they are cloudy, but as Stu says below, that alone supports the explanation that the blue lights are thunderstorms also; so also does the appearance of a bright light surrounded by dimmer light, which is the cloud lit up by the lightning. These locations would be in northern Mexico or west Texas.

I'll leave it for someone else to put this to bed by verifying the actual weather on that date at those locations. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 21:46, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I've now been convinced these bright areas are clouds illuminated by lightning. I'm open-minded enough to entertain any other reasonable explanatory theories, too - there's always a certain amount of uncertainty in this type of photographic forensics. I'm not 100% convinced at the specific city identifications that 76.69.45.64 offers. I don't have anything to specifically refute these locations - but I wouldn't bet money on the identifications, either. With a lot more effort - and if it really mattered - we could narrow down the uncertainty and be a lot more exact about the location and the field of view, based on the ISS location and the timestamp. Thanks for tracking down the NASA Earth Observatory link! It appears that I previously used an incorrect date for the photo, off by a few days - thanks for also spotting that - which means we are probably looking at moonrise, not sunrise!) Nimur (talk) 22:22, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Damn, you're right! Of course it's the Moon in the photo—the Sun would be much brighter and would probably be lighting up some of the visible ground. Duh. I assumed that the astronaut-photographer had identified it as sunrise, so I believed what I was reading (but the source page doesn't say any such thing); and I therefore assumed it must be correct that the sun could rise so many hours earlier when seen from low orbit, even though it seemed counterintuitive. In fact the Moon rose at 09:20 GMT as seen from that location on the ground on that date, which fits much better with the time of the photo.

Of course I was also fooled by the fact that the Moon looks round in the photo even though it was a pretty thin crescent. But zooming in on it, it's clear that the lower limb (toward the Sun) is much brighter; in the photo it's overexposed enough to actually look bigger than the rest of the disk, which is just lit by Earthlight. But I was an idiot to accept that it was the Sun.

Also, no credit for "spotting" the incorrect date, please; I just copied the date from the source page without noticing that another one had been given. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 23:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC), copyedited later.

A red sprite, blue-white lightning, and yellow city lights over Malaysia, as seen from the International Space Station. StuRat (talk) 01:53, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I go with the lightning theory. My reasons:

1) There would be more of a continuum between different light types in various cities, not such a stark contrast, since no city has exclusively one form of lighting.

2) The areas with the blue light seem to all be cloud covered, which I associate with lightning. The yellow lights, on the other hand, are sometimes cloud covered and sometimes not, which is what we would expect of city lighting. StuRat (talk) 17:40, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

This pic shows both lightning and city lights, and the early and late stages of a lightning strike look a lot like the pic in question. StuRat (talk) 01:53, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I have absolutely no idea. But it's interesting that if you look at the very furthest blue spot at full resolution, it seems to be displaced upward, just a little, from the apparent horizon. I have no idea if that horizon is land or a layer in the air, mind you - there's a much more apparent boundary line that is a green color at a much higher altitude - I really wonder what the heck that is, because the Earth always looks like it has such a sharply bounded atmosphere in these shots. But whether by a little or by a lot, the blue would seem to be above the ground ... I think. Wnt (talk) 22:32, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The acid test would be to find a blue/white patch over ocean or in an unpopulated part of the land. But personally, I doubt that there would be the purity of white light after it's been filtered through all of that atmosphere (this is a very oblique view) - blue light is scattered by the air, so distant lights tend to be yellow-ish - even if the light sources were white. Lightning is bright enough that plenty of blue light would get through - and if it's above-cloud lightning, it could be at high altitude (hence less air scattering the blue). The cloud patterns visible in the blue/white areas seem like there is some bad weather under them too.

If there is no open water area in the photo, I wonder if we could find other shots from a few seconds before or after?

SteveBaker (talk) 01:24, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, you can use the Earth Observatory Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth search method. For example, if you search based on NASA Photo ID (these are sequential, around the time of the posted photo):

ISS044-E-45540
ISS044-E-45541
ISS044-E-45542
ISS044-E-45543
ISS044-E-45544

...then you'll find multiple photos of the same region. The illuminated areas flicker on and off between frames - so that leaves little doubt that they are lightning! You can also search for ID ranges, ISS044-E-45520-45580 which include some spectacular sequences!

Nimur (talk) 02:08, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Yeah - that proves it. Thanks Nimur! SteveBaker (talk) 05:48, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Railways

Is there any country in the world where the railways operate 100% as a private commercial business independent from government influence, ignoring things like regulation etc which affects all private businesses? 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:CD71:6723:BFF7:6B47 (talk) 16:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Depends on what you mean by "the railways", I suppose. Freight railroads in the U.S. are privately owned. The private railroads own most of the physical track in the U.S. Historically, U.S. passenger railroads were mostly private as well, until they became money-losing ventures with the increasing use of automobile and air travel, which led the federal government to establish Amtrak. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 19:31, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

It's hard to imagine a private railroad being able to ignore regulations...laws are laws. Certainly private railroads in the USA are subject to government regulation. SteveBaker (talk) 01:08, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I think Steve has misunderstood the question. I believe the question is about railways that are are independent from the governemnt except insofar as they fall under the sort of regulations that would affect all private businesses. For example, ths US is wrong because of Amtrak and the Alaska Railroad, Canada is wrong because of VIA Rail and provincially operated commuter services, the UK is wrong because of Network Rail, and so on. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 07:01, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

AFAIK specific regulations and government involvement were limited during a fair amount of the Tranz Rail era in NZ although I expect there may have been some. I think any company with such significant infrastructure is likely to consider there to be a risk if they do something too major. Nil Einne (talk) 08:24, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

• Your best bet would be to look at railways in relatively underdeveloped countries, where the government doesn't have the resources (financial or organizational) to run complex infrastructure but the mining/fruit/sugar companies have deep pockets (and effectively form a state within a state). It looks like all railways in Liberia are private, and historically many Caribbean/American countries only had private railways (mostly of these are closed or nationalized). Senegal's only railway, the Dakar–Niger Railway, is privately owned (and has been hacked to bits as a result). Also, there are a few countries such as Monaco and Lesotho where the railways are state operated... but are operated by a different state (in this case, France and South Africa respectively). Smurrayinchester 08:43, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

What about Japan? I read the Wikipedia article on it but not quite sure I understand it or even whether the article is complete. It seems to be quite brief. 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:25D6:DA0F:C29F:7E08 (talk) 13:34, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

If you're looking for a country where the entirety of the railways are private (rather than just independent unconnected parts), than Japan is out. Per our Japan Railways Group article, some small parts are still owned by Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're involved in modern construction from our article, and Japan Freight Railway Company uses the private assets anyway. Nil Einne (talk) 14:30, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I suppose it's hard for private companies to build new lines due to the amount of time and money it costs. 2A02:C7D:B91D:CC00:603B:6322:7D0A:CFBA (talk) 16:38, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

And property rights. It's extremely difficult to buy uninterrupted stretches of land - if just one person refuses to sell, the whole project is jeopardised. This why even private railways (and motorways) are generally built with some government backing - you really need eminent domain/compulsory purchase powers to complete the project. Smurrayinchester 22:17, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

To be fair, the original question asked about the operation of railways, not the creation of new ones. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 07:22, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Share of scientific publications written in English

How big is the share of English among scientific publications, and how has it developed through the years? Had other language of science (French, Latin, German, Russian, Greek, another one?) had a bigger share in the past? --Scicurious (talk) 19:12, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

This is a few years old, but it is very short and explains that about 80% of all scientific papers are in English. See here. It should be obvious that Greek and Latin were popular long long ago. That has a Western bias though because just as many scientific ideas originated in India and China. Since the advent of mass printing, English has dominated science journals - which is why so many science papers are in English. From my experience, even conferences are in English. I've been to conferences in Spain, Italy, Turkey, and China. All of them were in English. To present, the person must present in English. Further, my own publications have been translated into other languages for local publication - primarily in Japanese. So, there are many cases where a single paper is represented in multiple languages. 209.149.113.52 (talk) 20:29, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

more scholarly refs on dominance of English in science publication, some talk about impacts on non-anglophones and what the future might hold. Last one has some recent stats: [4] [5] [6]. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:36, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Could the numbers above, which point to 75% in social sciences and up to 90% in natural sciences, be misleading? Maybe it's the case that English articles are cited 75% of all times in social sciences and 90% in natural science. So, it could just be a kind of blindness towards articles in foreign languages. People don't take a look at articles not written in English, since 'hey everything is in English.'Scicurious (talk) 14:27, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

You must define what you mean by "article." If you are referring to a written work that appears in a scientific journal, then I believe that it must be at least 75% of the articles are in English because more than 75% of the journals are in English. If, instead, you want to call any written paper an article, then there are articles written in every language. It will have more to do with how many college students there are per language. Also, being in English doesn't prohibit an article from being in another language. As I pointed out above, I write my articles in English, but they are translated into other languages. 209.149.113.52 (talk) 14:40, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I mean original article with an ISSN. Although I realize that it's difficult to decide how many articles do not get translated.

If you start counting every publication (patents, blogs, guidelines) then, I doubt the English share is still 75%. Scicurious (talk) 14:53, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

In the period from about 1870 through WWI, a *much* higher percentage of Chemistry and Physics papers and reference works were in German. But between 1939 and 1955, there was a bottleneck where a *very* higher percentage of those people in a position to publish papers were in the English speaking world. The Soviets would have published primarily for internal use and thus published in Russian, but pretty much anyone else would have published in English.