Pique the Geek 
Sun May 13, 2012 at 19:59:06 PM EST
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Before we get started, please allow me to wish all of the mums, grandmums, greatgrandmums, greatgreatgrandmums, and, often neglected, adoptive and foster mums out there a very HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! I just got off of the telephone with the former Mrs. Translator after wishing her the same. I would have wished my mum and grandmum that as well, but they are no longer in the temporal plane. I did give a card to my special friend since she has a little girl.
Like my current series about The Moody Blues on Popular Culture, this topic was suggested by my very dear high school buddy Steve Ahlert. (He approved of me using his name.) Steve and I sort of lost contact for a while, but now we speak almost every day. I LOVE my Straight Talk unlimited everything, $45 per month plan and my Samsung T528G!
Steve uses melatonin to help him sleep, and it is very effective for him. Now, Steve is not some new age trend follower. Actually he is a professional pharmacist, and is the best pharmacist insofar as knowing his area of expertise that I have ever known. Equally important, the way that he deals with his patients is outstanding. He has a knack for translating highly technical information to whatever level is necessary for people to understand what they need to do.
Melatonin is interesting because what has turned out to be sort of an incidental effect gave it its name. It is also interesting from a molecular structure/activity standpoint because it is chemically related to a whole host of psychologically active agents. Let us examine this interesting substance.
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Sun May 06, 2012 at 19:59:16 PM EST
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Last time we discussed technetium, and now we shall discuss the only other element with Z < 82 with no stable isotope, promethium (Z = 61). But there is more business than just that, and it has to do with a suggestion that commenter Wreck Smurfy's suggestion that I use actual hyperlinks to key terms rather than just bolding them. There shall be more about that later.
Promethium is actually not as interesting as technetium, but still has its moments. It has a storied tale of claimed discoveries, and one of my personal interests is the history of chemistry, in particular infighting by contributors. I got into one of those contests myself back in the day, when I supported a particular geometry for the lowest triplet excited state for cyclohexen-2-one, but that is another story altogether.
Promethium, chemical symbol Pm, is a member of the lanthanide series, and those are often called the rare earth elements. They are not all that rare, at least several of them, but their chemistry is such that they were extremely difficult to separate and purify until modern ion exchange chromatographic methods were developed after World War II, many of those techniques outgrowths of classified work during the Manhattan Project.
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Sun Apr 29, 2012 at 19:59:04 PM EST
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Last week a commenter suggested this topic, and I am always happy to get reader feedback and try to honor requests. Technetium is one of only two elements with an atomic number (Z) less than 82 (Z = 43) without a stable isotope, the other one being promethium, with Z = 61. Dimitri Mendeleev predicted this element after he had perfected the Periodic Table of the elements in 1871. He called it ekamanganese since it occupies the place in the table one row under manganese.
Technetium was claimed to have been discovered over and over, and credit to its discovery goes to Emilio Segre and Carlo Perrier in 1936. It was discovered in a foil that Ernest Lawrence had given Segre that was composed of molybdenum. Some of the molybdenum had been transmuted into technetium, and the Italian team confirmed this.
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Sun Apr 22, 2012 at 19:59:36 PM EST
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The germ of this piece came from an undertaking that I am considering. That undertaking is to write a post for every chemical element. The recent successes of my more technical pieces have made me decide to concentrate more on the harder part of science rather than less technical material.
The problem with that is that it would take over two years to cover all of the elements, and in reality even longer because there are topics out there that will surely be more topical. I am not sure that this is feasible. Maybe I could look at families, but then that gets way too general. Any thoughts on how to approach (or even if I should) this huge array of subjects would be appreciated.
In any event, I would start with hydrogen and work my way to heavier elements. One of the first things that came to mind was the isotope effect, because hydrogen has the largest isotope effect of any element. Please stay with us!
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Sun Apr 15, 2012 at 19:59:10 PM EST
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Beryllium, atomic number (Z) 4, is the second metallic element in the periodic table. By looking at the periodic table, one would think that it would be very similar to magnesium and calcium, but one would be wrong on several accounts. There shall be more about that later.
Beryllium is a comparatively rare element, both on earth and in the cosmos. There are a couple of reasons for that as well, and again there will be more about that later.
Most people have never seen the pure metal, but most of us have seen compounds of it, at least in jewelry stores, because it is an essential component of real emeralds. Let us take a look at this little know element and see what good it is, and any ill that it might cause.
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Sun Apr 08, 2012 at 20:00:08 PM EST
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Last time we discussed lean finely textured beef, commonly referred to as pink slime. Tonight we shall finish this short series by discussing two other forms of recovered meat.
Mechanically separated meat is derived from a process that dates back to around forty or a few more years. A newer process is called advanced meat recovery and has certain advantages over the older processes for some applications, but the older process is still used in others.
These products are in LOTS of prepared foods and interestingly are subject to a higher degree of regulation than lean finely textured beef, at least for beef products. Please join for the discussion to follow.
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Sun Apr 01, 2012 at 20:01:30 PM EST
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Pink slime is a slang term, and not a terribly inapt one for what is technically known as lean finely textured beef or boneless lean beef trimmings. Although I used the term pink slime in the title to get your attention, I think that it is a bit pejorative and shall use the term "the product" henceforth.
Since this is a meat product, it is regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and not the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This seems to me to have a bearing on how it has been approved.
There are a LOT of politics and hype surrounding the product, and I think that it serves my readers to look at the technical issues before we examine the political and PR issues. You might be surprised where I come down on the safety and wholesomeness of the product.
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Sun Mar 25, 2012 at 19:58:11 PM EST
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I apologize for not keeping up with my normal posts, but I have developed a rather serious neurological disorder, the common name being wrist drop. It has to do with damage to the nerve that serves to flex, in my case, the right wrist and fingers.
It also has a minor sensory component in that the dorsal surface of my thumb and surrounding part of my hand feels pressure poorly but is fully responsive to heat and cold. It happened literally overnight, as when I awoke Monday morning my hand was fully involved.
I am much improved now, and thought that I should share some of my findings with you. I also plan to resume My Little Town and Popular Culture next week.
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Sun Mar 18, 2012 at 20:00:21 PM EST
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(9 PM - promoted by TheMomCat)
Ovarian cysts are an extremely common condition in women of childbearing age, and not uncommon in women past menopause. In fact, most women of childbearing age have ovarian cysts that produce no symptoms. However, when the cysts become large or inflamed pain is often experienced.
There are several types of ovarian cysts, and they can cause different symptoms. Diagnosis is made by ultrasonic, MRI, or CT methods. Often a combination of techniques is used to obtain a more definitive diagnosis, and rarely laproscopic procedures are used. Ovarian cysts are divided into two broad categories: functional cysts and nonfunctional cysts. Functional cysts are those that are not associated with any disease process, whilst nonfunctional cysts are definitely associated with a disease process.
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Sun Mar 11, 2012 at 19:58:18 PM EST
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Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is back in the news since the Ohio Department of Natural Resources indicated that it was likely that disposal of those fluids after the actual fracturing operation was likely the cause of seismic activity in the Youngstown area, the largest of which was a magnitude 4.0 on 20111231. It turns out that it us usually not the fracturing activity itself that caused the seismic, but rather deep well injection for disposal of the spent fluids after use.
This not the only potential problem with this procedure, however. I have written about the process before, but am returning to give a more in depth treatment of it. I was first drawn to the subject when earthquakes occurred in Guy, Arkansas last year. The Guy area is not known for seismic activity, but sure enough after deep well injection of the spent fluids began so did the earthquakes.
Before we look at the potential problems with this process, we should look into why it is done and some historical background. It turns out that the process is over a century old.
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Sun Mar 04, 2012 at 20:58:34 PM EST
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I was actually going to address another topic this evening, but after late Friday and all of yesterday (and part of today, too) this topic is on my mind. First we shall review my symptoms then get to some material released by CDC about this nasty bugger.
Friday evening I was answering comments for Popular Culture and started feeling a little funky. I did not think much of it then, but I noticed that when I would stand up that my equilibrium was a bit off. It was getting late, so I shut down the computer and went to bed.
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Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 20:54:06 PM EST
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This is the forth and final installment on my short piece about milk. This time, instead to focusing on human consumption of milk from other species, in particular from cattle, to the importance of human infants being given human milk until at least six months of age. The first three installments can be found here, here, and here.
Human milk was universally used up until comparatively recently as the sole food for infants. However, it was not always the mum of the child that supplied the milk. Throughout history, surrogate women have supplied milk for other women's children, a practice know as wet nursing. This was pretty much confined to the wealthy class when the mum chose not to breastfeed her child and either hired other women to feed them or made slaves to that. Although not explicitly said, the Mammy character in the book and motion picture was assumed to be Scarlett's wet nurse. In other cases friends of relatives of women who for some reason or another could not nurse a baby would fill in for her. More on that later.
In the 1950s many countries began to encourage the use of infant formula as the "scientific" successor to natural breast milk. While formula can be a wise choice in many circumstances, the latest research is pretty much a consensus that natural breast milk is superior in almost all ways to formula. More on that later as well.
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Sun Feb 19, 2012 at 20:59:26 PM EST
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This is the third part of a four part series about milk. The first and second parts are here and here. The final installment will be about human milk with emphasis on its importance to the development of infants.
Cheese is one of the oldest processed food products known. Whilst the origins of cheesemaking are obscure, it is fairly easy to speculate on how it got started, and we shall look at that in due time. Archaeological evidence indicates that cheesemaking was an established art at least 4000 years ago, and the actual date of regular production is likely to be much older than that, but no records exist.
Because of the tremendous variety of cheese, I am sure not to mention one of your favorites. Please pardon that oversight, but I like to keep under 5000 words! However, I found an expert source that is likely to mention yours, and it appears directly under the fold.
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Sun Feb 12, 2012 at 20:58:34 PM EST
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Two weeks ago we began a short series on milk, in particular cow's milk, used as a food by humans. We mentioned that humans are the only species to drink any kind of milk after infancy (unless we feed it to animals). We also mentioned that human milk is the very best food for human infants. Next week we shall end the series by talking about the advantages of real milk to infants unless readers would rather see a discussion of cheese first.
Last time we pretty much focused on fresh milk and few derivatives of it. This week we shall look at some of the derivatives of milk, either fresh or fermented. There is a marvelous variety of liquid milk derivatives available, and some are very delicious. In addition, there is butter which obviously is not liquid.
For a product as perishable as milk, it is amazing that so many wholesome fermented products can be made from it. There are reasons for that, and we shall get to them in due course.
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Sun Feb 05, 2012 at 20:57:37 PM EST
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NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) spectrometry is one of the big guns in organic chemistry and biochemistry for determining how atoms are strung together in molecules. There are many different kinds, but the two of greatest utility to chemists are proton NMR and carbon-13 NMR. A friend of mine asked me for some help for his daughter who is studying the subject in Organic Chemistry right now, so I thought that I might as well use it as a topic for this series.
Before we get deep into the subject, note that some authors refer to NMR spectrometry and others to NMR spectroscopy. I prefer the former term because the connotation of spectroscopy, to me at least, has to do with lenses, prisms, and diffraction gratings, making it an optical method. There are no analogous devices in NMR, so I prefer spectrometry.
All NMR has some features in common, so we might as well cover the basics first. By the way, this has nothing to do with nuclear energy, and the only radiation present is in the radiofrequency range, so it will not fry you.
This is heavily connected with quantum mechanics, but I shall try to use analogies that are more easily visualized than a bunch of equations. I do not intend for this to be a graduate level abstract.
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Sun Jan 29, 2012 at 21:00:27 PM EST
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Of all foodstuffs, milk is unique in that it provides all of the nutritional needs for infant mammals. In addition to nutrition, it also supplies essential antibodies the first few days to newborns. Milk is unique to mammals, and is one of the reasons that mammals had the evolutionary advantage that they had when they arose during the age of reptiles.
However, humans are also unique in that we are one of the few mammals who continue to take it after infancy, and the only species that continues to take it after adolescence and into adulthood. Milk is far from the perfect food for adults, but certainly can be part of healthy diet.
Humans are also unique in that we are the only species that takes milk in a natural setting from other species. By that I mean that we actively collect it, not like giving the cat a saucer of milk. The nutritive value of milk is species specific, and our habit to taking cows' milk (for the most part) is quite unnatural.
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Sun Jan 22, 2012 at 20:57:19 PM EST
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Last time we talked about trichonomiasis, a sexually transmitted infection (STI) that often produces no symptoms. Chlamydia is another STI that often causes no symptoms, at least initially. We shall investigate this condition this week and then move to topics other than STIs next time.
This infection is usually caused in humans by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis and is found only in humans. Unlike trichomoniasis, women are more often asymptomatic than are men. Estimates are that around 75% of women present with no symptoms whislt around 50% of men do have symptoms, almost the opposite from our infection of the week last time.
Although this is a serious subject, let us keep it a bit light. After the fold in a song by Todd Rundgren called "You Left me Sore". Although most likely written about gonorrhea, it is still apt in this case.
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Sun Jan 15, 2012 at 20:58:46 PM EST
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Trichomoniasis is probably the most commonly spread sexually transmitted disease (STD) in the US at present, yet hardly anyone has heard of it. The main reason is that there are many "silent" cases, with no symptoms at all.
The purpose of this piece is to raise awareness of this infection in the hope of doing a small part to have people get themselves tested. Unlike HPV Strains 16 and 18, it is not strongly linked to cervical cancer, there is evidence that it can increase the risk of this disease to a small extent, but any increase in risk for cervical cancer is too big an increase. By the way, we covered HPV some time ago, here.
Fortunately, after diagnosis it is easily treated and cured in the course of a week or two, depending on the regimen used. We shall get into that near the end of the piece.
This is sort of an unusual piece for me, because many years ago, before the former Mrs. Translator and I were an item, I became infected with this parasite. As we cover the subject, I shall insert my personal observations where appropriate.
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Sun Jan 08, 2012 at 21:00:52 PM EST
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Last week we discussed the production and uses of aluminum, and that piece got a lot of comment traffic and made the Kos Recommended List, which I value greatly. Some of the comments asked questions and made me decide to write a follow up piece, because some of the questions were excellent in their own right, and some of them also caused me to think a bit further about our use of this material.
Tonight we shall concentrate on a few more uses of aluminum, why it is so unique, and less environmentally damaging ways to produce it. It turns out that there is an experimental process to refine aluminum that does not produce nearly as much carbon dioxide as the Hall-Héroult process, and might be more energy efficient as well.
There is no time like the present, so let us get started! That is unless you have an objection.
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Sun Jan 01, 2012 at 21:00:20 PM EST
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Aluminum (or aluminium to our UK friends) is one of the most useful metals that are commonly available. Unlike other metals such as iron, copper, and the like, aluminum has been used in large quantities only fairly recently. Actually, alumimium is the better name, because it is in keeping with the naming of most metallic elements with the "ium" ending. However, we shall use the US term. Interestingly, the brilliant British chemist Sir Humphrey Davy called it aluminum, but he never produced the actual metal. In addition, his first name for it was alumium, and folks from My Little Town who were older used that name! That really should be the systematic name for it.
Aluminum compounds have been known for centuries, but the free metal only since around 1825 and even then in an impure form. It was not until very late in the 19th century that aluminum was produced on a large scale, using a process that is essentially identical with the process being used even now.
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Sun Dec 25, 2011 at 20:55:51 PM EST
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Christendom, like other religions before it, assimilated former religions to forge its own traditions. This is very much the rule rather than the exception when a new religion begins to dominate an older one. It is easier to get people to come to your point of view if do not change things too much.
There are a number of pagan traditions that were assimilated into the Christmas tradition, and not all of them were done simultaneously. For example, the Yule log is much more recent than celebrating Christmas on 25 December (and that date is not universal, by the way). Let us look as some of our customs that are not Christian at all.
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Sun Dec 18, 2011 at 21:00:07 PM EST
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The popular TeeVee show NCIS purports to use science to solve most of the difficult bits of its cases, almost always murders. Since this is about a TeeVee show, I was torn betwixt posting this piece here or on Popular Culture, but chose here because it will get a little geeky.
Before I continue, let me tell you that I like the program very much, not so much for the science but for excellent script writing and character development. I think that it is important to recognize a well crafted program. Since most viewers are not technically proficient, the science is not a problem for them.
But it is for me. I am reminded of another popular TeeVee show from years, the Jack Klugman one called Quincy, M. E., that relied heavily on fictionalized scientific methods. I had a boss at one time who coined a phrase that I shall reveal later.
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Sun Dec 11, 2011 at 21:02:17 PM EST
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Sodium hydroxide, aka lye, is one of the most important basic chemicals used in industry, and until not too long ago, for several home uses. It can still be found in a few consumer products, but because of its usefulness as a chemical reagent for clandestine preparation of methamphetamine, is hard to get now without a legitimate business reason. However, I found some at Lowe's a couple of years ago (under a different label) for opening drains. I wanted some to show my relatives how to make soap.
A significant amount of this material is still used for making soap, but its uses are so widespread and pervasive that soapmaking is just a small fraction of the applications for this material. Industrially it is used when a strong, cheap base is needed, because it is amongst the strongest and cheapest, other than perhaps calcium hydroxide (lime), but sodium hydroxide is very soluble in water where calcium hydroxide is not.
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Sun Nov 27, 2011 at 21:02:22 PM EST
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The way that atoms bond together to form molecules has been a question asked since scientists came to the consensus that atoms do indeed exist. Work progressed rapidly after the turn of the 20th century from both theoretical and experimental breakthroughs. To keep the discussion easy to visualize, we shall consider only diatomic molecules, but the concepts are good for any number of atoms. One of the great advances was the development of the idea that chemical bonds can either be covalent, where each atom shares bonding electrons equally, or ionic, where one atom donates an electron to another atom entirely.
Actually, pure ionic bonds do not exist because all bonds have at least a little bit of covalent character. Pure covalent bonds are common, common examples being the nitrogen and oxygen of the atmosphere. There is a very cool way to predict where a particular bond falls in the covalent to ionic spectrum, and that is to use electronegativity values.
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Sun Nov 20, 2011 at 20:59:21 PM EST
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The subject of love has been investigated by philosophers, writers, dreamers, theologists, and a whole host of others throughout the ages. With the advent of the "science" of psychology, the question was even further muddled. Please do not get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for ethical psychologists, but some of the hypotheses that the likes of Freud proposed were just plain wrong and just confused the issue.
We are just beginning now to solve some of the puzzle, and it turns out that there is quite a lot of biochemistry (and not just neurochemistry) that is involved. With modern chemical analytical techniques, precise measurements of various neurotransmitters can be made, and with functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI) actual images of the human brain in action can be had.
Using a combination of observations about how people behave during different stages of love and some results from these methods, let us take a look about how love works, how it can be one of the most exhilarating experiences that is, and how it can be so terribly hurtful when it goes wrong. Are you ready?
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Sun Nov 13, 2011 at 20:59:13 PM EST
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First of all, I am back from taking vacation from writing for the past week. I needed to get my thoughts organized and also to recharge a bit. There are also some other things going on that are significant that I mentioned yesterday in a post. But this is Pique the Geek, and we shall try to stay on topic.
Now, I hope that I have been right in this series more than twice, but these two instances are significant. Those of you who read this series regularly know that I often write on health issues. I have made recommendations here from time to time, and in these two occasions the Food and Drug administration (FDA) actually has, presumably independently, has adopted one of them outright and the other at least partially.
After doing more research, I have to say that my statement in the paragraph just above is not quite accurate. FDA actually did something BEFORE I recommended it, but it got almost zero coverage and I just today found the information. I shall clarify this as we go.
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Sat Nov 12, 2011 at 00:00:07 AM EST
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This might sound like a trivial entry, but it is not. I have been sort of burnt out writing almost continuously for the past many months. It would be different if I were paid for it, but I am not. I do it as a labor of love, and also have the calling to be a teacher. I just did not have the heart in me to write Popular Culture last Friday, and that carried over to Pique the Geek Sunday, and My Little Town Wednesday.
There are several reasons for that. For one, the comments, tips, and recs just do not seem to be coming like they used to do. That is probably my fault. I believe that the quality of my pieces has sort of slipped here of late, and I sincerely apologize for that. There is a reason, but it is personal.
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Sun Oct 30, 2011 at 19:58:06 PM EST
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This might sound like a foolish title, but actually the concepts of heat and temperature are quite different. Obviously things that feel "hotter" must have more heat in them, right? Actually, that is not always, and is often NOT, the case. The two concepts are quite different, but are related.
In a bit we shall go into specific definitions of what heat and temperature actually are, but it is more interesting to look at the historical thoughts about them. Back before quantitative physics, the higher the temperature that an object had, the more heat that it was thought to have. That is correct for a specific object, as the temperature increases, the amount of heat in it also increases.
But it is easy to show that for dissimilar objects, the amount of heat is quite unrelated to the temperature. I shall show you that ice might contain more heat than red hot steel! Ready to look more deeply? Then let us go to it!
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Sun Oct 23, 2011 at 19:59:18 PM EST
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I know that this is sort of a subject about which I do not write often, since I am, for the life sciences, more botanist than zoologist. But this topic was by special request from a friend, that friend indicating that zebras are her or his favorite animal. So Zebras it is.
Actually, as I began doing research on them, I also became fascinated with them as well. Not only are they extremely handsome animals, they have an extremely complex diversification into diverse subspecies, something that I vaguely knew but was very interested to learn more about as the research continued.
Zebras are uniquely African, except of course for those that have been taken away from there. They are very much allied with horses and asses, but with some twists. One of the most interesting thing is that the accepted scientific name for them is likely erroneous, but that comes later.
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Sun Oct 16, 2011 at 19:56:48 PM EST
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First, please allow me to apologize for not posting Popular Culture Friday last. I was occupied until late in the day and did not have enough time to write a quality piece for the series, and I would rather post nothing rather than a poor piece. It shall return this coming Friday.
Actually, this is not about soap, but rather synthetic detergents, although we often call then "soap". In the companion piece to this one from last week, here, the terms are explained in detail.
There are a couple of reasons for using synthetic detergents over actual soap. Part of it is economics, because both vegetable and animal fats, essential ingredients for soap, tend to be fairly high in cost. Most detergents are based on petroleum, so when oil prices are low then can be cheaper to produce than soap. When petroleum is high in cost, then detergents become less economically favorable.
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Sun Oct 09, 2011 at 19:59:34 PM EST
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Before we start, here is an important public service message brought to you by Translator. There is a fraudulent email going around asking that gmail users verify their accounts by the end to the month to avoid suspension. This is a fraud! If you get an email from Gmail@carrierzone.com, do not respond and delete it.
We take something as mundane as soap way too much for granted. It is not an exaggeration to say that soap has saved more lives over its history than modern medicine has over its history. Of course, soap has a much longer history than modern medicine, but soap is still essential as a medical adjunct.
The actual origin of soap is lost in prehistory. I suspect that the first soap like materials were plant saponins, and we shall get to them in just a bit. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of soap (and by extension detergents), it is important to understand just how these materials work. At first it does not seem to make a whole lot of sense, but as we continue I promise one of those "Aha!" moments. Ready to get going? I am!
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Sun Oct 02, 2011 at 20:04:50 PM EST
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We hear a lot about trans fats in food and the negative health effects of them. However, most folks without a background in chemistry do not really know what that means. Tonight the object is to clear that up, and to point out sources that are high in them so they can be avoided.
Contrary to the opening statement, not all trans fats have deleterious health effects. There are a couple that seem to be beneficial, but unfortunately they are sort of rare. They are also some of the few trans fats that occur naturally. By a huge margin, most trans fats consumed are artificially produced, and we shall get into that as well.
To understand the topic well, a chemistry lesson will first have to be given. However, this IS Pique the Geek!
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Sun Sep 25, 2011 at 19:59:35 PM EST
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The recent results from CERN (the acronym for the original name for the outfit, Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) about neutrinos being propagated faster than light speed has caught a lot of attention. I am still not convinced that the data are correct, but 15,000 individual measurements at the high certainty that is claimed certainly gets one's attention.
I am not prepared to say whether or not these results are valid as of yet. The folks at CERN are begging other laboratories with comparable apparatus and expertise to verify (or to refute) the findings. That is how science is supposed to work!
However, 15,000 individual determinations are a LOT of data! Let us for the moment take the data at face value and assume that this is not a fluke nor a mistake, but an actual "violation" of the Special Theory of Relativity that indicates that no massive particle can exceed the speed of light, henceforth called c. Ready to do some thought experiments? I am! Let us go!
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Sun Sep 18, 2011 at 19:56:56 PM EST
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This seems to be a topical topic (please forgive the confoundment of words) because of the controversial claims that the purported "Doctor Oz" gave last week about arsenic in apple juice. I shall give a couple of links later about that, but shall first describe the element in a Geeky way.
Then I shall dismember "Dr. Oz's" credibility. Fair enough?
Before we get started, know that arsenic is all around us, at higher or lower concentrations, depending on where we live. I shall get into that a bit as well. The important thing to come away with from this post is that arsenic is almost (but not ALWAYS) a bad thing to ingest or to have for an injection. On the other hand, it likely is allowing us to communicate via the Internet as we read and speak.
Are you ready to start? I am!
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Sun Sep 11, 2011 at 19:59:18 PM EST
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Lots of pieces have been written about why Hurricane Irene did so much damage as a Category 1 storm as it skirted the Eastern seaboard. The answer is deceptively simple, but does not fit in with what we have been taught about hurricanes.
Before we examine Irene specifically, let us look at what a hurricane really is. A hurricane is a rather intense form of a tropical cyclone, and we shall use just the term cyclone in general for all of these kinds of storms. There are other kinds of cyclones, but for this piece the unqualified term shall mean tropical cyclones, except at the beginning of the main text where the term cyclone itself is defined.
Before we get started, the only reference that I am going to make to the story of the day is the date in the title. This has been covered ad naseum elsewhere, often with distortions to fit a particular political perspective.
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Sun Sep 04, 2011 at 20:38:19 PM EST
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Sorry to be late tonight. I was occupied earlier this afternoon than I had planned and got a late start. However, I wanted to produce a quality piece even though it did not post exactly at 9:00.
This the last part in our three piece series on anesthetics. We have covered general anesthetics of the inhalation type and of the IV type, and now will discuss local anesthetics. The primary difference betwixt general and local anesthesia is that in general anesthesia the patient is generally unconscious or at least highly sedated, whilst in local anesthesia the awareness of the patient is generally not impaired, although sometime they are sedated by other agents.
The term "local" is not as descriptive as one might think. While it is true that very small areas can be anesthetized, often much larger areas are. By the way, it is likely that local anesthesia is much more ancient than general anesthesia, for reasons to be explained later.
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Sun Aug 28, 2011 at 20:00:10 PM EST
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Last week we started this three part series with inhalation anesthetics, and here is a link. This week we shall discuss injected anesthetics, and finally shall finish up the series next week with local ones.
We should once again stress the difference betwixt anesthetics and analgesics. In general (this rule is not 100%, but darned close), anesthetics render the patient unconscious so that surgical procedures can be performed with no physical pain during the procedure. In addition, many anesthetics cause muscle relaxation which makes surgical procedures less traumatic.
Analgesics, on the other hand, are not designed to render the patient unconscious, but rater to moderate the sensation of pain caused by many reasons. A few analgesics can be used as anesthetics, but in general depress the medulla such that respiratory difficulties often result.
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Sun Aug 21, 2011 at 20:00:05 PM EST
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Anesthetics are as essential to modern surgery as are sterile fields and antiseptics. There are a couple of reasons for that, the most obvious being that the patient most likely could not survive the shock and pain of any but the least invasive procedure with out them. Interestingly, the use of anesthetics in the modern sense is quite recent, dating only from the mid 1800s.
There are two major divisions of anesthetics, general anesthetics and local ones. General ones cause a more or less complete loss of sensation and consciousness, whilst local ones cause a loss of sensation for only a relatively small part of the body and leave the patient conscious. In addition, general anesthetics fall into two wide classes, inhalation ones and intravenous ones. We shall discuss, in general terms, inhalation general anesthetics tonight.
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Sun Aug 14, 2011 at 20:00:50 PM EST
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One metal that we take for granted is tin, something that most of us see and handle every day in the form of "tin" cans, long used to store food. Actually, this invention dates only from the early 1800s when canning itself was invented, although tin plated iron and steel date back much earlier.
Tin is used it lots more than cans, however. Much of the tin used today is in the form of solder, used for joining other metals, particularly copper and brass, together. Formerly a 1:1 by mass mixture of tin and lead was used for soldering copper water pipes, but because of increased awareness of the dangers of lead, other solder compositions are now used for potable water.
Let us take a few minutes to explore this interesting metal.
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Sun Aug 07, 2011 at 20:01:17 PM EST
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Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is one of the most common viral infections in the population. HPV causes nuisance conditions such as common warts up to deadly cancers. Some estimates indicate that essentially all cervical cancers are caused by various strains of HPV.
There are very many strains of HPV, most all of them highly contagious. Let us spend a few moments discussing this important group of infectious agents. Before we get started, let me make it clear that this discussion will be frank and might seem to be extremely graphic to some. That is just the way it is, and to water down the content would not do a service to anyone.
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Sun Jul 31, 2011 at 20:01:27 PM EST
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When the term yeast is used, most people think of freshly baked bread. Many people will also think of a cold, foamy headed beer. Both are made possible by yeast, but there are many more applications.
Yeast has been used to raise bread and make beer and wine since prehistory, and the work is very ancient. It comes to us in modern English via the Old English gyst, which in tern derived from the Indo-European word yes, meaning quite literally to bubble. Thus the word is very much older than our understanding that yeasts are living things, dating from the 1850s due to the work of Louis Pasteur.
When we think of yeast, we normally are referring to a single species (out of around 1500, give or take), Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This single species is responsible for raising bread, making wine and much of the beer that is drunk, as well as alcohol for beverage and industrial purposes. Unless I qualify, when I use the term "yeast" this is the species to which I refer.
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Sun Jul 24, 2011 at 20:02:50 PM EST
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I was running out of time last week as the publication hour was neigh, so I was not able too include everything that I wanted to include. In the meantime, I have gained some additional information that refutes one of the points that I made. Remember, The Geek likes to be corrected when he is wrong. We shall get to that after the fold.
This installment has to do with some experimental or otherwise not widely used loudspeaker designs, but also something much more personal to me. It has to do with a good friend from almost 40 years, and his interaction with Paul Klipsch and others involved in the company.
First we shall make the correction, then talk about other loudspeaker designs, and then the more personal stuff. Ready to go?
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Sun Jul 17, 2011 at 19:58:12 PM EST
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In electronics, a loudspeaker is what most people just call a speaker, the device that converts electrical signals to sound. They can range from very simple to very complex designs, with variations in cost from just a few cents to thousands of dollars.
All practical loudspeakers are electromechanical devices, using an analogue electrical signal to make the loudspeaker components to move in such a manner as to in turn move air (usually, although other media can be used for purposes other than human perception) and thus make a sound. For human hearing, air is almost always the medium used.
Loudspeakers are one of the few modern electronic devices that are analogue only. In other words, a truly digital loudspeaker does not exist except in a few research laboratories and they are not very good. It is interesting to me that the final stage of reproducing sound is firmly rooted in the 19th century insofar as basic technology in concerned. This discussion is limited to electromechanical loudspeakers. Purely mechanical ones are much older than electromechanical ones.
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Sun Jul 10, 2011 at 20:01:36 PM EST
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Before we get started, let me be clear that any information contained here, although to be best of my knowledge accurate, in in no way intended to be a substitute for advice and care from licensed medical professionals. OK, disclaimer stated.
Aspirin is one of the first synthetic drugs, and is still in wide use after over 100 years. It was first marketed by Bayer in 1899, and sales are still strong despite competition from drugs like acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and naproxin sodium. Bayer has in the past week or two come out with a new advert about its new "quick acting" aspirin.
This material is "quick acting" because the particle size is much smaller than that of regular aspirin. Since aspirin is only slowly soluble in water, the greater surface area for the same mass does speed up absorption.
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Sun Jul 03, 2011 at 19:57:17 PM EST
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I have written pieces about fireworks in this space for several years now. This year is no different, but instead of describing how modern fireworks operate, we shall, courtesy of The Doctor, take the TARDIS back to 1784, the first Independence Day after ratification of the Treaty of Paris, so for the first time the United States was a truly independent Nation on 04 July.
Unfortunately, my video camera was not working at the time, so I shall have just to describe what fireworks looked like at the time. The Doctor told me that he would come again and that we would go to the 1785 one for next year, and make sure that I had a functional video camera.
Except for color, fireworks in that era were similar to some of the least advanced ones that we have today. The complex aerial effects are quite modern, bright color is modern, and set pieces are also modern.
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Sun Jun 26, 2011 at 20:00:03 PM EST
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Sulfur is one of the few chemical elements found in its pure state in nature. Consequently, it was known and used by the ancients. Many of those uses are still employed to this day, so it is a good thing that sulfur is rather common, at least locally. Historically, sulfur was mined near volcanic activity and thermal springs where it often occurs. In a few third world countries that is still a source of income for a significant number of people.
As the use of sulfur (mostly as sulfuric acid) increased in the 19th century, mining sulfur near volcanic regions could not keep up with demand, so new sources had to be developed. It was known that vast amounts of sulfur occur in association with salt domes in and near the Gulf of Mexico, but there was no way to mine it due to water and shifting sand. Thus, in 1894 a brilliant process was devised by German-American engineer Herman Frasch to solve the problem.
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Sun Jun 19, 2011 at 19:59:13 PM EST
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A comment thread on Friday evening's Popular Culture installment got me to thinking about this, and I decided that it would be a good topic here, and some Geeky stuff that can be used by a wide range of the public. Thus, I write this as a public service.
There are several situations that people can find themselves in due to circumstances beyond their control. Many of them involve interruptions of utility service, but some other eventualities can also require fast attention to mitigate further damage or even personal injury. We shall discuss a few of those this evening.
Probably the most common situation that occurs is electrical service interruption. This can be more serious than one might think.
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Sun Jun 12, 2011 at 20:01:44 PM EST
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Boron, the chemical element with an atomic number (Z) = 5, is an uncommon element. The reason is that there is no really easy way for stars to make it except through going supernova. A more technical way of saying this is that stellar nucleosynthesis is not a viable pathway to produce boron. As a matter of fact, it is the least common very light element except for lithium.
Tonight we shall look into some of the properties and uses of boron, as suggested by Kossack shrike Friday evening during comments on Popular Culture. The interest that shrike has in some new medical uses for boron, and we shall go into some detail near the end of the piece.
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Sun Jun 05, 2011 at 19:58:00 PM EST
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This week we shall explore misconceptions about science generally, and then take a few specific cases for further examination. There are a few concepts that are essential to understand about what makes science work, and why it is the best tool that we have to understand the natural world, and to use science to improve the human condition.
There are two fundamental large scale misconceptions about science, and we shall treat them first. Then there are an almost unlimited supply of what I call false science, meaning that scientific terms and logic based on incorrect premises are used in attempts by those who actually know better to influence people. The fundamental misconceptions are sort of to be expected from folks who are not educated in science, but he false science is used by nefarious persons to influence those not versed in real science, usually for a monetary or a social goal or goals. Please let us explore.
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Sun May 29, 2011 at 19:54:53 PM EST
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The process of curing meat (including fish, shellfish, and poultry) is an ancient process, the origins of it lost in antiquity. The origin of our verb to cure comes from the Latin verb curare, meaning "to take care of". The word passed into Middle French as curer, and after the Norman conquest in 1066 into what became Middle English as curen. Thus is shares its roots and ultimate meaning as the medical use, "to take care of".
Real curing requires salt, but for several reasons salt alone is not the ideal curing agent. In a truly cured meat (I shall continue to use that term to include the items in the first sentence), the salt content is high and the moisture level is low. Remember, the primary purpose of curing is to prevent bacterial and fungal attack on the meat, but there are other factors at play as well.
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