I give a hoot but we all pollute

On the back of a big truck today, I saw a placard declaring:

"CO2 is not a pollutant."

I wondered about the reasoning behind such a statement.

What, after all, is a pollutant?

I would venture, any substance introduced into an environment, that has an adverse effect upon that environment. Makes no difference if it is generally benign or "natural." It is entirely possible that a tanker truck of orange juice could tip over into a creek and kill the fish, thus making O.J., in this case, a pollutant.

Carbon dioxide is rather common. You make it within your own body. It won't kill you to breathe it ... so long as there also happens to be some oxygen in the neighborhood. Perhaps the placard people meant to emphasize this fact.

Of course, the current worry is that too much CO2 is heating up our planet. Perhaps the placard people disagree. Guess we will all know soon enough, one way or the other.

Nature's gamble

In the days when few people lived to see old age even in the best of circumstances, Mother Nature apparently took an evolutionary gamble -- in the hope that the new human being would survive long enough to at least pass along his genes.

In Africa, a mutated gene in some persons distorts the shape of the red blood cells. This, for reasons too lengthy to explain here, helps to protect such a person from malaria -- an ancient, rampant killer on that continent. We call that mutation sickle cell anemia and we also call it a disease, an awful, painful disease. But malaria kills much faster than sickle cell anemia.

Today, I have learned about another one of evolution's trade-offs.

From wikipedia:

"It has also been hypothesized that the cystic fibrosis genetic mutation has been maintained in humans due to a selective advantage: heterozygous carriers of the mutation (who are thus not affected by cystic fibrosis) are more resistant to V. cholerae infections.[19] In this model, the genetic deficiency in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator channel proteins interferes with bacteria binding to the gastrointestinal epithelium, thus reducing the effects of an infection."

Cholera kills much, much faster than cystic fibrosis.

It makes one wonder how many more of these trade-offs have been made, how many more of the autoimmune diseases have a hidden silver lining in their dark cloud.

Weird Science

If you were to traipse into the hills and borrow a cup o' corn squeezin's from Cletus Q. Hillbilly's still -- the natural sugars of the corn having been converted to alcohol -- and then stirred into the jug a squirt of Pseudomonadaceae bacteria culture, which oxidize alcohol to create energy ...

... then you would soon have yourself a sample of vinegar, the end result of little pseudo's hard work. Vinegar is very useful for many things.

Acetic acid is the principal component of vinegar. Play around with it chemically, to create a salt or ester, and you get another useful product, acetate, a type of plastic once used to make phonograph records. Tweak it another way and you get acetylene, an explosive chemical in much demand for welding.

Wow.

Kidney Juice

What to do with your morning, um, lemonade. Sell it to your neighborhood chemist.

I learned in my studies of Rome this year that in the heyday of that Empire, urine was prized as a valuable ingredient for washing clothes and collected from the public privies for that purpose.

I remember that during my sophomore year of high school, I proudly announced to the class during an oral report, my discovery that Ladies of Rome used lion wee-wee to bleach Their hair.

Yeah, I was that kind of kid.

Most of us wannabee scientists are aware that synthetic urea (natural urea, converted from ammonia, being a major constituent of your daily offering to the porcelain god, because it is a good way to get rid of excess nitrogen) is highly valuable in the production of a number of products, such as explosives, plastics and as a flavor additive to cigarettes.

From wikipedia:
“[Urea, aka carbamide] was the first organic compound to be artificially synthesized from inorganic starting materials, in 1828 by Friedrich Wöhler, who prepared it by the reaction of potassium cyanate with ammonium sulfate . .. thus starting the discipline of organic chemistry.

This discovery prompted Wöhler to write triumphantly to a friend:

"I must tell you that I can make urea without the use of kidneys, either man or dog. Ammonium cyanate is urea."

Happy day for him.

Today I learned more strange facts about kidney juice. Seems that most mammals have the ability to break urea down (oxidize it) into a substance called allantoin. Synthetic allantoin is, like urea, quite a useful product. It’s probably in your mouthwash, toothpaste or lipstick.

But humans and higher apes have lost the ability to convert urea into allantoin.
More details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uric_acid

That doesn’t seem to bother us too much, (does it bother you?) but I wonder why evolution took that step, evolution usually having a good reason for what it does. Related to this seems to be our loss of the ability to make our own citric acid (vitamin C), which most animals can do and which can be a very bad thing, as ye olde timey sailors learned the hard way. Evolution screwed up on that detail.

I had a guinea pig for a pet as a kid, and I learned then that humans share that latter defect with those furry little critters.

Very strange.

Little Scientists

The other day at work, I was clearing out an ancient portfolio to do with the District Science Fair. One page caught my eye and I rescued it from the To Be Recycled pile.

It was a page of tips on helping to awaken childrens' interest in science.

Two of them, in particular, interested me:

First, it is just as important to involve Girls in science as it is boys. That ought to be common knowledge by now. Girls can, and should be encouraged, to do anything (anything intelligent!) that boys can do. If you don't believe that Girls/Women are just as smart as boys/men and just as capable, I feel sorry for you, as this world -- in which Women are succeeding and achieving wherever the artificial barriers of bad laws and faulty tradition have been demolished -- must really be confusing for you.

Secondly, parents should let their children take apart old appliances. It whets their natural curiosity and leads to questions and interest in how things work.

It sounds like a great idea but it certainly requires some supervision, as a lot of appliances these days have dangerous parts inside, and those shouldn't be on the list.

But today at work, I was looking at an old, broken camera. It seems perfectly safe and I think I'll take it home and let my Niece have at it with a screwdriver.

Weird thought of the day

Most of us know that our stomachs are a big sack of acid -- hydrochloric acid, to be exact -- which dissolves our food for us. Cows have even tougher tummies, with sulfuric acid doing the hard work for them.

My question: Once the churning and burning is done, how does the stomach manage to send the used-up food material onwards while retaining the acid that dissolved it?

Coffee, cells and Nighty-night

How coffee (caffeine) actually works on the cellular level to keep you awake:

http://www.sfn.org/index.cfm?pagename=brainBriefings_adenosineAndSleep

"Scientists once believed that the peppy chemical caffeine induced its effects by blocking the same sedating mechanisms that tranquilizers like Valium enhanced. But in 1981, researchers found that caffeine's kick stemmed from its relationship to the chemical adenosine.

Normally, adenosine attaches to special receiving areas on cells, or receptors, and sets off distinct actions. Studies of rats revealed, however, that caffeine stonewalls these receptors, blocks adenosine from carrying out its job, and as a result induces alertness. This suggested that adenosine plays a role in sleep. Now increasing evidence is confirming that, indeed, adenosine is an important "fatigue factor.""

Adenosine is a broken-down piece of a bigger molecule abbreviated as ATP. ATP is what gives us energy. Apparently, adenosine accumulates as you are awake and active, attaches to your cells and cues sleepiness.

So it's like the cellular equivalent of dirt accumulating on your car suggesting strongly to you that you ought to run it through the car wash. Or of waste products accumulating in your bladder, signifying with more urgency each minute that you really ought to take a trip to the restroom.

A whole lot is going on inside of you as you go about your daily business -- and as you sip that hot bean juice to try to chase off the Sandman!

I'm of course curious as to what plants use the caffeine alkaloid for, why they evolved it, since of course they don't need to worry about staying awake.

Poison ivy

The woods near my house are cool and quiet this time of year. All is buried beneath a blanket of leaves, and the weak winter sunlight streams easily through the bare tree branches.

Nowhere to be seen is the scourge of summertime, poison ivy. Its leaves are gone but its living roots sleep beneath the soil, waiting for warmth to spread forth again its deadly bouquet of beauty.

For poison ivy is a lovely plant -- thus does it fool many the neophyte. If not for its nasty itch factor, it would surely be sold in every garden center and happily cultivated around the world.

Your dog can gleefully roll in poison ivy. A goat can eat it. Birds gorge themselves on the berries. But you, poor human, cannot even so much as touch the damn leaves unless you really enjoy scratching your skin to shreds.

Why?

We share this sensitivity only with our closest cousins in the primate world.

Apparently, at some point in our common evolution we must have picked up a gene for ivy-misery that lower forms of life do not have. How, I wonder, when the stuff, native to America, predates the arrival of humans to these shores, and no other higher primates even live here (in North America) outside of zoos and maybe Bigfoot.

Evolution, genetics, chemistry ... life is rich with so many questions that no one has answered yet.

Carbon question

Been reading about this element in my encyclopedia this week.

We all know that common graphite and uncommon diamonds are both forms of carbon. Allatropes.

We know that carbon is the building block of life, the carbo- in carbohydrates -- sugars and such.

But I am wondering how "solid" carbon appeared on our planet in the first place, with the Earth never having plunged to the temperatures required to solidify most other gases. Other solidified gases are not found in elemental form on our planet, such as oxygen, only as components. You've got to really cold planets like Jupiter to find them in that form.

And how does a solid, tangible, visible measure of carbon, combine with some other gas to become invisible, such as in carbon dioxide?

Chocolate and germs

According to the Associated Press, a study in the Journal of Proteome Research finds that "people who crave daily chocolate show signs of having different colonies of [intestinal] bacteria than people who are immune to its allure."



This study raises several questions:

What the hell is a proteome?

Where did these researchers find people immune to the allure of chocolate? Did it involve shovels and a cemetery?

And since the Western world has only known the delight of chocolate for 500 years, what did that germ do in our tummies before it was introduced to the stuff? Make us crave mead and barley cakes?



Or did Europeans get this germ from kissing Aztecs?

Continuing the study of the universe

I hold in my fingers a tiny scrap of aluminum, a bit of debris from the bird cage in the living room.

I blogged a few weeks ago about the Big Bang and how stars formed. In those stars, all the elements that make up our world were formed, by the fusion of hydrogen or helium atoms.

Now I have learned that our own sun incorporates some of those elements that formed during the existence of two other stars which were born and died.

Our own earth has a core of iron, which during the early, molten stage of the planet, drew in elements with an affinity for iron. Elements with an affinity for oxygen, like this aluminum, rose to the surface.

So this shiny scrap of aluminum tells a story from the violent childhood of our Earth. Seems a shame to throw it away.

Aluminum is a fascinating element anyway -- how scientists finally learned to free it from bauxite -- but I'll go into that some other time.

The Big Bang

I picked up a book today humbly titled "Rock and Gem" and it's worth every penny of the six dollars that it cost me. Fittingly, it opens with a description of the formation of the universe:

"It is hard for us to imagine a time ... even before there were chemical elements, the building blocks from which rocks and minerals [and us, too, I might add!] are made. Yet between 13 billion and 15 billion years ago, the entire universe consisted of one tiny dot of primordial energy. Then, in an instant, the Big Bang set in motion a chain of events that resulted in the creation of atoms and, over millions of years, the formation of galaxies and stars."

It is in these metaphysical scientific theories that science and religion seem to share a certain common ground, I think. The same skepticism that torments me when I try to make my head believe what my heart wants to believe, about a loving God somewhere out there and a life beyond -- this skepticism crops up when someone tells me that our vast universe was once a tiny speck of energy, etc., etc. It is so utterly fantastic.

The scientist will note, however, that E. Hubble famously first observed the expansion of galaxies -- proved that the universe is expanding, something that any human being can now see for themselves with the proper telescope or other equipment.

And the nature of expansion is that the matter in question had to change from an initial, unexpanded state.