User:Scartol/sandbox

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Contents 1 Maurice (Shelley) 2 action potential comments 2.1 Lead 2.2 History 2.3 Biophysical and cellular context 2.4 Phases

[edit] Maurice (Shelley)

• Throughout the summer, Claire wrote anxiously to Byron, begging to see Allegra; he consistently refused. Do we know why? Byron comes off sounding like a royal arseface in this section. I trust this is how you intend for the reader to feel?

• Mary Shelley wrote Maurice for Anna Laura Georgiana Tighe, or Laurette... Insofar as we've seen her as simply "Laurette" at this point, I wonder if the full name is necessary here?

• "Writing and publication" contains background biographical info on George Tighe and Margaret, Lady Mountcashell – but we just learned all about them in the Background section. Perhaps these parts were written at different times, with the intent of merging? (Seems like the sentences between footnotes 7 and 8 could be moved into Background.)

• In his article on Maurice, Mekler suggests... Could we get a first name and an identifying noun (critic, biographer, etc)? Same with Tomalin later on.

• It's a little jarring for me to be reading about the novel's potential for publication, and then suddenly jump to the part about when it was found in 1997. Maybe we need a sentence about "It was lost for xxx years" or "The last mention of the book appeared in 18xx"?

• Any way to clue us into where and/or how the manuscript was discovered? Was it in a bread basket? Tucked away behind a painting? I'd just love to have more detail here.

• The "Tomalin" reference isn't in the Bibliography.

• In the extended quotes from critics, I'd prefer to have some kind of in-text lead-in. ("As Tomalin notes, blah blah..") This would be especially useful in the fourth paragraph of Style, genre and themes, which is mostly a series of such quotes.

• In addition to this, the first three children Percy and Mary had together died. Perhaps a small readjustment of the wording here? "...the Shelleys' loss of three children is also cited as a probable influence" or some such? Referring back to the biographical info, rather than repeating it as if for the first time; seems like it would make the article more cohesive.

[edit] action potential comments

[edit] Lead

These are great, Scartol! :) They're just what I was hoping for, both because they're insightful and also because they're relatively easy to fix. ;) I've already tried to fix a few, as described below... Willow (talk) 14:25, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• Could the parenthetical sentence (For comparison, ordinary eukaryotic cells are typically 100,000 times smaller, being roughly of radius 10 μm.) be excised from the lead, or at least put into a note of some kind?

I put it into one of those new nifty footnotes! Willow (talk) 14:25, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• Chemical signals over such distances would travel much more slowly. I tried linking chemical signal, but no dice. Is there something we could link to in order to provide an explanation of what they are?

I clarified that no material object in a human body could move at 225 mph. I'd been thinking of other types of inter-cellular communication over long distances, such as hormones traveling through the circulatory system or the transport of something within a cell, say, along the microtubules. Willow (talk) 14:27, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• An action potential is stimulated by depolarizing the membrane... This makes it sound like people or creatures do this. Is that so, or is the wording off? (I'd rather see: "An action potential occurs when the membrane is depolarized...") Also, why is "depolarized" italicized?

I un-italicized depolarizing, but I forgot change to the passive voice, wait a second...OK! Willow (talk) 14:25, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• The same wording question comes up later: ...making it much more difficult to open them and produce another action potential at the same spot... Could we use instead: "...for them to open, allowing another action potential at the same spot..."?

Excellent suggestion; as you guessed, I had been thinking of it as an electrophysiologist, i.e., as someone stimulating the axon to provoke an action potential, rather than taking cell's natural perspective. Your comment also reminded me to mention that physiological action potentials travel in one direction along the axon. I think the refractory period prevents the axon from "back-firing" until it's safely out of range. (That's probably too complicated for the lead, though.) Willow (talk) 14:33, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• making the voltage of the cell's interior less negative relative to the cell's exterior Is it wrong to say "increasing the voltage of the cell's interior relative to the exterior"?

Your suggestion is definitely simpler, so I went with it. My only worry was that people wouldn't get that the resting potential was negative, and that going from -65 mV to -45 mV was 'increasing the voltage; that people might get confused because the absolute magnitude is decreasing, you see? But maybe I'm worrying too much. Willow (talk) 14:25, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• Should we used em dashes or spaced en dashes? I've used en in the lead, but I'm willing to use whatever. Just wanna know the standard.

Why is everyone suddenly worried about em and en dashes? G-guy was just calling attention to them as well; are em-dashes now illegal? I've always used them as a convenient, extra-strong parenthetical, to make it easier for the reader to parse a somewhat complex sentence. I'd understood that the Powers That Be didn't like actual parentheses, because they render inadequately on some screens. We can always resort to commas or re-phrase the whole sentence more prosaically if need be, although that might make the prose less than "brilliant". ;) Willow (talk) 14:25, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History

Thanks so much, S! :) I'll try to incorporate your suggestions. :) Willow (talk) 22:40, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

• The role of electricity in the nervous systems of animals was first observed accidentally in dissected frogs by Luigi Galvani, who studied it systematically from 1791 to 1797. I expect there's an unclear pronoun antecedent here. How could he observe electricity in the nervous systems of animals if he was studying it systematically?

You're right, this was worded funny. I fixed it just by removing "accidentally" and "systematically". Readers who want the full story can read the reference. ;) Willow (talk) 22:40, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

• Scientists of the 19th century studied electrical signals in whole nerves... Are there half nerves? Should this be linked somehow? (I've never come across the phrase "whole nerves" before.)

Well, the real advances in neurophysiology came when you could record action potentials from a single cell, with the electrode tip inside the cell. Nerves are usually made up of bundles of neurons, and it's pretty tricky to dissect a single neuron from a whole nerve, considering that neurons are usually only 10 microns across (I think that'd be 4 millionths of an inch?). It used to be really hard to get an electrode that small, too. So the 19th century people just laid a whole nerve on a series of extra-cellular electrodes and watched the action potentials go by. Luckily, there are these giant neurons in squids and their relatives, that are a full millimeter across; you can actually see them with your eye! That made it easier for the 20th century people to record intra-cellularly. :) Willow (talk) 22:40, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

• Their hypotheses were confirmed in the mid-1970's and 1980's using the technique of patch clamping to examine the conductance states of individual ion channels. Did Hodgkin and Huxley confirm the hypothesis, or someone else? If someone else, I'd vote for naming them, since the sentence as it is now makes it look like it was H&H.

I clarified that Bert Sakmann and Erwin Neher developed that method. Willow (talk) 22:40, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

• In the past decade... I worry that this will need constant updating. Can we use "around the turn of the century" or some such?

You're so right — I'll fix that! :) Willow (talk) 22:40, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

• ...the ion channels of insects are sufficiently different from their human counterparts that there is little chance of side-effects on humans. As a paranoid "please dont make me eat chemical weapons" freak, I'd very much like to see a reference for this.

I still have to hunt that down, and you do have good reason to think that there could be some cross-over; but some of them, like permethrin seem relatively safe; at least, they don't seem to act as neurotoxins for humans, whatever else they might be doing to us... Willow (talk) 22:40, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Biophysical and cellular context

Thank you, thank you, thank you! :) I'll try to amend them, although Tim has smoothed many out already. :) Willow (talk) 18:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• Ions are charged atoms or molecules. Do we really need this? I feel like most people will know what ions are, or – if not – can follow the link to get the info. I've tightened up the first couple of sentences; please revert if you prefer. Don't bother asking, I won't be offended.

Tim fixed this, thank goodness. I can never make up my mind about what we can assume readers know, so I'm always including everything: good for spinning a yarn, but not for an encyclopedia article. ;) Willow (talk) 18:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• A patch of membrane is defined as a segment of the membrane small enough that the transmembrane voltage does not vary significantly over its surface. This feels stuck into the second context paragraph. Is there some way to situate it more comfortably?

I felt just the same way! I put it into a footnote; that way, more finicky readers won't complain that we haven't defined our terms, but for others, the reading will flow more smoothly. Willow (talk) 18:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• Channels can be open or closed; when closed, ions cannot pass through. Is this necessary? It feels self-evident.

So true. :P Okay, I fixed this to "Channels are either fully open or fully closed.", which gets the point across better, anyway. Willow (talk) 18:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• Ion channels can respond to their environment. Soon after this sentence, we're hearing about different classes of channels. Should we have another clause in this first sentence, something like: "...which set them into different classes..."?

• Consequently, the concentration of potassium ions K+ inside the neuron is roughly 20-fold larger than outside the cell, whereas the sodium concentration outside is roughly 9-fold larger than inside. Major "I'm really dumb about science" time: Is a neuron the same as a cell? If so, could we just use one term or the other here to avoid confusion?

• You may want to check the edit made to the last sentence in "Ion pumps" to make sure I didn't bumble it all to hell.

Looks great! :) Willow (talk) 19:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• I've taken a look at the "Resting potential" section (and made some tiny fixes), but I must remind you that my vision blurs and I get severely stupid when I see all those wacky numbers and symbols.

I tried to keep them minimal, at least in the earlier parts of the article, but I thought there was no avoiding this equation, since it's pretty pivotal to everything else that follows. :P Brave souls that venture past that equation-dragon! ;) Willow (talk) 19:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• Is the parenthetical "(muscle fibers)" needed in "Anatomy of a neuron"?

• Therefore, we focus on this cell type, and discuss the differences with other cell types below. I'd be in favor of removing this sentence. This sort of ordering is IMO intuitive to the organization of Wikipedia pages. If not chronologically, the most important stuff comes first.

• ...although the axonal termini (called the synaptic knobs or buttons) proide synaptic inputs to the dendrites. I assume this was supposed to be "provide"; please revert my edit if not.

• ...action potentials can occur only at the nodes of Ranvier; they cannot enter the axonal regions sheathed in myelin... Is it me, or does this sound like something out of Lord of the Rings? =)

That's really funny; it does sound like that! :) Perhaps it's a mark of my misspent childhood. ;) Willow (talk) 19:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• I'll point out (not that I expect it's necessary) that the final paragraph in "Anatomy of a neuron" has no citations.

That's it for Context. Let me know which section you'd like me to provide tiny, itty-bitty-not-very-helpful comments about next!

I think I may have fixed your suggestions, which were wonderful and really helpful. I'm relieved that you found the writing OK. Perhaps you'd like to look over the "Phases" section next? That's the center of the article, the part that describes what actually goes on in an action potential. It's still relatively unreferenced, though. :( I'll try to fix that tomorrow, I think. I'm feeling lazy and self-indulgent today, like a cat stretching out in the sun. ;) Willow (talk) 19:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Phases

• However, those ionic permeabilities act back on membrane voltage... This feels odd. Could we say: "those ionic permeabilities react (or respond) to membrane voltage"?

• ...it converges within a few milliseconds to the resting potential... I usually think of things converging on something, rather than to it.

I took another holiday today, and worked on your stuff while you worked on mine. ;) I enjoyed it a little too much; now it even seems strange that I ever worked on action potential — the memories are just slipping away... Nevertheless, I did try to fix these things up; does it read better now?

Oh, and if you had a chance sometime to look over the beginning sections of Noether's theorem, I'd be grateful for your suggestions. Since it's a prominent link from Emmy Noether and many other articles, I was thinking that we ought to lavish a little love on this li'l theorem. :) I'm not sure if I understand it myself, so it's sure that I didn't explain very clearly and I probably flubbed its explanation as well. :( But if you could point the way, I'll try to fix it; if we spirits have offended, think but this and all is mended. :D I hope the prose is not too confusing! :P <-- at her ineloquence vexed Willow (talk) 22:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)