Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2016 July 23

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July 23

Why is there so much broken pottery buried in every garden in Great Britain?

Take a spade and start digging in any back garden in Great Britain and you are sure to find loads of broken pottery. Why did people bury their pottery? How old is it? Is it Roman earra? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TTshojo (talk • contribs) 09:15, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Not in my back garden there isn't. It was ancient woodland and common land going back to the Doomsday Book until 1945. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:37, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Until fairly recently all rubbish was simply dumped outside the house, or in a hole in the garden - rubbish collection is a recent invention. Pottery has the distinction, when compared with other rubbish, of being almost indestructible. It is also something which cannot easily be repaired or re-used (unlike metals). It has also always been quite cheap, and easily replaced. If you happen to live somewhere which has been inhabited for a long time, people will have been chucking out their broken pots for many centuries. They chucked out a lot of other rubbish as well - but the pottery is what survives best (which is why archaeologists get so excited about it). Wymspen (talk) 11:20, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

To clarify, pottery is only indestructible in the sense that some fragments of it remain after thousands of years. Finding an intact piece of pottery, on the other hand, is quite rare (one reason being that it was unlikely to be thrown out until it was broken, and another being the frost/freeze cycle). Eventually it may all break down into grains that are indistinguishable from sand. StuRat (talk) 16:13, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

See potsherd for the archaeological significance of this throughout history.

Not just "pottery", it's predominantly Victorian blue and white. It's the product of four things, all of which peaked in the Victorian age: pottery availability (factory potteries made it cheaply available to everyone), pottery fragility (Victorian china will break on a quarry-tiled floor when 17th century heavy slipware on a beaten earth floor will just bounce), refuse handling (greater volumes of middens near the houses) and also the development of the towns themselves and the denser packing of housing. This effect reduces from around 1900, mostly as refuse handling becomes more centralised.

In some towns, like Bristol, it's not pottery but some industrial waste product instead. Dig a garden in South Bristol and it's not long before you find some zinc smelter slag from the Keynsham side of town. That stuff gets everywhere. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:16, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Here in the TMZ, if you dig anywhere[ Citation Needed ] you will find pieces of the broken hopes and dreams of people who moved here hoping to make it in show business... --Guy Macon (talk) 19:19, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

If the OP considers the dates of all that pottery (and he didn't mention clay pipe stems) most will probably date to before hyper-consumerism. The only thing collected by the authorities in those periods would have been night soil. People, did not have TV sets to depose of nor washing machines nor plastic packaging and tin cans. Any glass bottles and jars where reused. If one wanted (say) vinegar, one took the old jar back to grocer to get it refilled from his cask etc. Household supplies where bought loose and not in little packets. Metal was still expensive so any unwanted metal tools, implements were traded in for scrape and recycled so was broken glass. What was left was a small amount of broken pottery that had little recyclable value and thus, was simply dumped in one's back yard. This was also before the time of cigarettes, one could buy a clay pipe of tobacco and then throw the pipe away after smoking it, so this is why you should also find short lengths of small diameter white tubes amongst the stuff you dig up. Around the 1900's local authorities started generating electricity to light the streets. The power-stations were fueled buy rubbish and so dust-bin-men started to collect not just dust (victorian euphemism for nigh soil) but anything dumped in the bin to fuel the boilers. So the mass of 'blue and white' your finding is probably mostly restricted to the period where 'blue & white' became affordable and cheap in an area which was already developed and limited by date to the introduction of the dust-bin-men which signaled the end of having to dump broken pottery in ones own yard. Dig up a garden in a new town such as Milton Keynes and you won't find any.--Aspro (talk) 19:20, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Victorian dustbinmen (at least in Britain) didn't collect night soil. They were two separate trades, and turf was fought over. Particularly in South Bristol, where night soil was something of a local specialty trade (Night soil from the whole city went out through Bedminster, towards the market gardening areas beyond.) Andy Dingley (talk) 00:16, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

And "dust" collected by dustmen was also valuable; recyclable materials were extracted but the bulk of it was ash from domestic coal fires which was sold as an ingredient of brick-making. The Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend, has a servant inheriting thousands of pounds from his former master's lucrative dust business. See Ashes to Cashes: The Value of Dust. Alansplodge (talk) 17:41, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

See also 24 Hours in the Past, for the edifying spectacles of both dustman reenactment, and a Tory cabinet minister striking for worker's rights. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:53, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

I wonder if some part of this issue involves the practicality of moving an outhouse. Every so often those who use them dig another hole and move the thing over it. Over the course of hundreds of years, that's a lot of holes. Wnt (talk) 23:55, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

British outhouses didn't move. They were normally shovelled out periodically. We didn't have the land space to move them around, as rural US practice did. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:26, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

As it happens, I've been working on related articles recently, and can now talk fluently about more toilet types than I ever knew existed. The outhouse, to stick as close as possible to the subject, may be a pit latrine (i.e. a hole in the ground), and the superstructure may be moved, the pit sealed, and the fecal sludge left to undergo decomposition; it might instead be another dry (non-flushing) sort known as a bucket toilet, which is what it sounds like. If the house had land attached (anything from a village cottage to a farmhouse), the night soil went straight on the garden; it the house was in a town, the municipality paid for the collection of these buckets, the Rochdale system of sanitation. See also the privy midden, which, from what I can gather, encompassed both human excrement and household waste - not that there would be much of the latter, as explained above. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 14:18, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

However, I agree with User:Andy Dingley; I have lived in two Victorian terraced houses in east London and the soil in the back gardens of both was riddled with ceramic fragments about the size of a fingernail and all of it seemed to be broken blue and white tableware. As small children, we would spend hours digging up "buried treasure" in the flower beds, but never found two pieces that would fit together. We imagined that previous residents had enjoyed going into the garden to throw plates at each other. Alansplodge (talk) 17:41, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

If you think there's a lot of pottery in UK gardens, check out terra preta for something on an altogether different scale. Matt Deres (talk) 12:01, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Finasteride and Estradiol

Do Aromatase inhibitors (which inhibit estrogen) counteract the sexual side effects of Finasteride? They say that Finasteride increases the production of Estradiol! https://www.baldingbeards.com/how-to-avoid-propecia-side-effects/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.18.177.78 (talk) 12:41, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

That sounds like a request for medical advice, disguised as a general question. --Hofhof (talk) 13:29, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

The funny thing is, it doesn't matter. All we have to do is refrain from giving medical advice, which does not preclude helping OP find medical information. For an example of this, see my response and references below. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:26, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Here [1] [2] are few scholarly articles about the effects and side effects of Finasteride. They seem to touch upon some of your questions, and you also look through their references, as well as use google scholar to see what papers cite these and search within those papers, like so: [3]. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:25, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Quartary consumers

Using African animals, what is the most popular quartary consumer?? Given that lions eat cheetahs as well as plant-eaters, they can be either secondary or tertiary. What is the most common quartary consumer when it comes to African animals?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:56, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

You'll never get a clear answer to this, it all depends on your perspective and definitions, which you basically get at in your question.

That being said, we can still offer candidates that might be interesting. One way to get at quaternary consumers is to find a tertiary and see what eats it (searching for "quaternary consumer" is more standard terminology, and may help you find more relevant material [4]). So if you think a lion is tertiary, what eats lions? Lots of things, but the botfly and other parasites are the easy answer, and they tend to be fairly high density in Africa. Here's [5] a nice scholarly survey of the primary eaters of lions. The top eaters-of-lions in terms of incidence are Isospora felix, a protozoan (infecting 48% of sampled lions). The top animal lion eater is a trematode. There are also of course many blood-sucking insects that feed on "top" mammal predators like lions and cheetahs. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:47, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

The other place to get large/long food chains is in aquatic systems, and these then chain into the bird world. I am not that familiar with the freshwater ecology of African, but you can easily see certain raptors that eat insectivore birds as quaternary consumers - so a Bateleur may eat a pratincole, an insectivore bird, the pratincole eats a dragonfly, dragonfly eats another bug, which may or may not eat bugs. Since the dragonflies themselves can be order 4-5 within the aquatic realm, this could put the bateleur up to level 6 or so if you like. Then there's the African_fish_eagle, and again, lots of depth is available in fish-fish-insect-insect food chains. So certain birds of prey will be good candidates, but I'm pretty sure there are many parasites of predatory mammals that are far more numerous :) SemanticMantis (talk) 16:47, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Here [6] [7] are a few scholarly articles on large African mammals and their prey. While they will not specifically answer your question, they will give you good context and further reference. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:47, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

What Wikipedia article does the OP refer to? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:06, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Not sure. Could be Consumer (food chain) or food chain or many of the related articles like trophic level, etc. Matt Deres (talk) 15:55, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Water poisoning is not caused by inadequate salt intake?

We can read here that the Yanomami indians have a sodium intake of 0.9 mmol/day, which is about 50 mg of salt per day. This is so small compared to even the most salt restrictive diets that you can implement in practice, that it seems to contradict the guidelines that I've read for exercise about drinking and salt intake to prevent water poisoning. Clearly, something is not right about the whole idea to make sure we get in enough salts when this refers to quantities of the orders of grams of salts when the Yanomami indians survive in a tropic conditions doing hard work, drinking a few liters of water per day and getting in hardly any salt at all.

Should drinking a lot of water and taking in salt to prevent water poisoning be compared to doping, similar to injecting yourself with insulin and taking in a large amount of glucose? If an athlete would collapse into a hypoglycemic coma, would we say that this happened because he didn't take in enough glucose, or would be say that insulin doping is the cause? Count Iblis (talk) 18:35, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Your link is talking about the salt content of their urine. For people in modern countries with air conditioning and the ability to avoid hard labor, the salt content of urine may be fairly similar to the salt content of one's food. However, if one is sweating frequently, the salt losses via sweat can exceed the losses due to urine by a large factor (>100 in some cases). Without a clearer source, I would assume their salt intake is actually much larger than 50 mg/day, but that most of it comes out as sweat rather than urine. Dragons flight (talk) 19:07, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

It is well known that you can kill yourself by drinking too much water. I wonder whether drinking too much Pedialyte or Suero Oral would have the same effect? --Guy Macon (talk) 03:35, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Is appearance of white hair in early age belongs to psychological troubles?

Question moved from Language desk Tevildo (talk) 23:04, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Is appearance of white hair in early age belongs to psychological troubles or it's a result of genetics only or combining of the two? 213.57.115.202 (talk) 19:39, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

See Human_hair_color#Stress. Rojomoke (talk) 20:21, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

I had a very small lock of white hair show up on my forehead when I was 18, think Lily Munster, but not so prominent. I was hospitalized with an almost full head of brown hair when I was 33 (the white lock was there, but had not grown--indeed most people only noticed it if I pointed it out). After 6 months and several major surgeries to my abdomen I was released at age 34 and 2/3 of my hair had turned white. Purely OR, but I think the former showed a genetic disposition and the latter the effects of major (physiological) stress. μηδείς (talk) 18:03, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Purely OR indeed. Of course we'll never know how your hair would have changed without the physiological stress, Scientifically I don't think it demonstrates any relationship between chaging hair colour and stress. The same problem that exists with all people who appear to turn grey under stress - how would thay have been with no psychological stress. I have spent much of my life in healthcare and have seen long term harrowing illness in people with normal hair colour that did not change. I also recall seeing pictures of starving prisoners with uncertain futures in the Bosnian conflict in the early 90s who are clearly under severe psychological and physiological stress who all have black hair. Richard Avery (talk) 07:21, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Let's see. Enter the hospital in the fall with 95% brown hair and diverticulitis, have a month of intravenous IV antibiotics, then surgery with a 60% survival rate (and complications) to remove two thirds of your lower intestine, and leave the hospital with your hair 66% white? Do most people go from 95% brown to 66% white over 5+ months? This article suggests a possible auto-immune response, likely triggered by the antibiotics. My blood was monitored constantly, and I was on high doses of antihistamines for the burning itch the drug caused my entire body, which the doctor said was an expected side effect, but better than the alternative. I wish I knew which drugs I was on, besides the psychologically stress-relieving morphine drip. [I read 16 books *King Jesus, Gamkrelidze & Ivanov, e.g.) with quite a bit of pleasure over that time.] μηδείς (talk) 01:41, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

You are clearly stating that you have no doubt of any kind that your hospitalization caused your hair color to change. That is not science. You are purposely excluding any other possible cause. As stated, you have no control group to compare to. Therefore, you can blame the gray hair on the month of the year, the position of Jupiter, a cat that wandered by your window... What you have is an anecdote. No matter how strongly you believe in your anecdote, it is not scientific data. The best you can do is include it with thousands of other instances of people having hospitalizations and note the percent of people who have hair color change. As noted above, it is a very small percent. Therefore, you can, at best, claim that there may be a minor correlation between hospitalizations and hair color change. In my opinion, it is an individual fluke. My eye color has changed twice. They were blue until I was hit by a bus and arrived DOA at the hospital. After a few days, my family noticed that my eyes turned green. They stayed green until I was hit by a drunk driver and, again, arrived DOA at the hospital. It took a few weeks before I noticed in the mirror that my eyes were blue again. So, I consider that an individual fluke. I don't claim that severe head trauma causes eye color change. I only state that my personal eye color changed with severe head trauma. I seriously doubt that yours (or anyone else's) would. I also state that if I heard this story from anyone else, I simply would not believe it. So, I consider it a rather forgettable anecdote. 209.149.113.4 (talk) 12:28, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

No, I did not say my hospitalization caused my hair color to change from brown to white in a 5/6 mo period at age 33. As for the rest, TLDR. μηδείς (talk) 00:04, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, genetics must play a role, too, along with stress, whether physical or psychological. Also, certain meds or food and drink might affect hair color. (There's also sun bleaching, which doesn't affect the follicles, just the current hair.) StuRat (talk) 14:48, 25 July 2016 (UTC)