David Bradley – Page 372

Fluted Filter Paper

As a chemistry student, I was always taught to flute my filter papers, but a heated debate about another method of using your filter paper is raging on the Chemed-l discussion group about why others fold their paper and then tear off the corner. Hal Harris University of Missouri-St. Louis reckons the little corner tear improves the filtering process and also speeds it up significantly. So much so, he says, that “Over a lifetime in chemistry, I’m sure that this has saved me a cumulative 20 msec, at least.”

Meanwhile, here’s the standard method of fluting filter paper. The technique is used when you wish to separate a liquid and a solid, keeping the liquid and discarding the solid. The specific arrangement of folds (flutes) in the filter paper will allow the liquid to pass through it very quickly and at the same time provide a large surface area on which to collect the solid impurities.

ES&T Online News: Skeptics get a journal

Paul Thacker of the ACS wrote to tell me he has written a summary of the state of play in publishing when it comes to being skeptical about climate change science. Check out his piece on the journal “Energy & Environment”.

He suggests that climate-change skeptics rejected by mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journals can always send their studies to Energy & Environment and his premise is supported by Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, the journalï¿½s editor. She says that the greater the agreement between climatologists, the more suspicious she becomes of their claims that human activity is the cause of global warming.

At least one citation from this journal mentioned in an EPA report was slipped in, says Thacker, and let to the subsequent deletion of the whole section on climate change from the report. To me that seems like almost an admission that there is no consensus.

Psoriasis

Sciencebase reader “Dr Viswanath K” contacted me today with the following question: “What type of cell in the hypothalamus controls epidermopoisis/epidermokinetics?”.

There’s absolsutely no way I can claim to be an expert in this area, although I could ask an expert and provide definitions of those two terms and perhaps find a description of the types of cell involved. However, I am sure there is at least one Sciencebase reader out there who knows that answer. Feel free to leave a comment on the subject if you have any insights.

Oleocanthal Structure

A natural product from extra virgin olive oil works as a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agent, with effects similar to ibuprofen according to researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center and collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania, The University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, and Firmenich, Inc.
Oleocanthal structure
The compound “oleocanthal” inhibits the cyclooxygenase (COX) enzymes.

The finding is significant because inflammation increasingly is believed to play a key role in a variety of chronic diseases. “Some of the healthï¿½related effects of the Mediterranean diet may be due to the natural anti-COX activity of oleocanthal from premium olive oils,” observes Monell biologist Gary Beauchamp.

The findings are described in the September 1 issue of Nature.

Cancer therapy side effects

There’s an interesting tale of a novel side-effect causing problems for young cancer sufferers in the UK. Nightclub bouncers it seems have been turning away cancer patients who have been rendered hairless by their treatment on the basis that they must be “skinhead thugs”. According to the Times – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2319293.html – half the young cancer patients from Manchester’s Christie Hospital have been turned away from a pub or club door. The solution was to issue the patients with a photo identity card to stop them being turned away.

Pines Lab People

I’m not yet sure whether it’s uber-geeky or just clever-clever, but the “people” web page for the Pines Lab at Berkeley, that’s Alex Pines, in case you didn’t know, divides up past and present team members into “Current Pine Nuts”, “Old Pine Nuts”, and “All Nuts”. There are also Global Pinenuts, presumably those Pines lab members who have fallen far from the tree.

Just be thankful, Professor Dogg at MIT hasn’t had a similar idea…or worse still Hadley Cocks at Duke!

Pines lab people can be found here

Porn Star Names

TL:DR – This article from 2005 warns readers not to indulge in pornstarname memes that might expose their password secrets, such as mother’s maiden name, first pet, and other such personal information.

Porn star names seem to be the modern trendy equivalent of star signs. People at parties ask you what your porn star name might be, and others have a useful little formula for generating them. First name comes from the name of your first pet, say. Lucky. And, the last name, your mother’s maiden name. Cocker. Hence my PSN might be Lucky Cocker. My wife’s is Goldie Black…

It’s fun and seemingly harmless. But, watch out for websites that offer to generate a PSN for you…typing in your pet’s name and mother’s maiden name might seem innocuous enough, but remember that very information usually forms the basis of the security checks for your online banking too…

Incidentally, my pet wasn’t called Lucky and my mother certainly wasn’t a Cocker. I’m not that stupid, it’s Snowy and Hedgecock.

UPDATE: It turns out I needn’t have bothered coming up with a porn star name for myself, apparently there is a David Bradley porn star out there somewhere as it is. Check out this Sig Figs post for photos of several other people with the name David Bradley (but not the pr0n star, I hasten to add).

UPDATE: A self-styled Wikileaks for porn has revealed the real names of dozens of porn stars who use stage names (industry pseudonyms). The Independent reports that, “The ability of those pornographic film performers to hide their identity behind sometimes bizarre stage monikers has been shot to pieces after a website published a leaked database containing the real names, dates of birth, and official nicknames of more than 15,000 of the adult industry’s hard-working performers, past and present.”

wHy aRE LeaRNeD SoCietIES SO KeEn on ACRoNyMS

Just in, a press release from the Royal Chem Soc. I really didn’t get far into it because I stumbled at the first major acronym – EuCheMS. Why is it that learned societies and academics in general opt for all these acronyms with mixed upper and lower case letters?

I realise they’re an aid to remembering and pronouncing the acronym, but EUCHEMS would look soooo much neater on the page.

TtFn

Erotic pictures could cause brain crash

TL:DR – Visual overload caused by gore or phwoarrh can cause emotional blindness, according to research done in the USA back in 2005.

Forget Cronenburg’s Crash…

If you feel your viewing partner cannot see you while watching TV, it could be that the flash of nudity that was on the screen, just then, has caused emotional blindness. The same effect could lead to accidents if drivers succumb to this condition having seen a suggestive billboard.

Portions of the research exploring this effect by Vanderbilt University psychologist David Zald and Yale University colleagues was published in the August 2005 issue of Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.

“We observed that people fail to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after neutral images,” Zald said.

Anyone who has ever slowed down to look at an accident as they are driving by–or has been stuck behind someone who has–is familiar with the “rubbernecking” effect. Even though we know we need to keep our eyes on the road, our emotions of concern, fear and curiosity cause us to stare out of the window at the accident and slow to a crawl as we drive by. The same thing seems to happen whether it gore or phwoarr!

Catnip caught catnapping…

According to this week’s C&EN many cats are unaffected by catnip.

chemical structure of nepetalactone Apparently, only 50% of cats respond to catnip. Catnip sensitivity is inherited, says Carolyn McDaniel, a veterinarian at the Feline Health Center at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.

Catnip is available as a herb or the essential oil of Nepeta cataria, and it’s the compound nepetalactone that is one of several chemicals known to set off the characteristic behaviour of cats exposed to it. This behaviour generally starts with sniffing, licking and chewing, followed by head shaking, body and head rubbing, and then repeated head-over-heels rolling.

No one is sure why cats respond to nepetalactone in this way, but it sounds like it’s doing something not dissimilar to the action of cocaine. (I defer to the experts on that presumption though).
If you’d like a print-quality molecular structure of nepetalactone to accompany an article you may be writing on this compound please check out my molecular modeling service.