The Buzz About No Buzz

The Buzz About No Buzz

Science Fridays

      There are so many researchers, from so many universities in the world, researching so many different things, that it simply boggles the mind.  It's just like one of the side stories in Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (inaccurately named trilogy).  With an infinite number of planets out there, it is only a matter of time before someone discovers various, standard household items, that naturally grow on one of these planets, so that they no longer have to be manufactured.  The planet in the story where this concept is brought up, is the planet where mattresses are grown.  The same principle seems to prevail concerning university research labs.  If there's something you can imagine - even really weird things - then there is probably a research lab somewhere already working on it. 
      Such is the case in the Department of Genetic Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, the subject of today's post.  They are working on a vaccine against cocaine.  Yes, you read that right.  They have tested it on mice, and on primates already, and are about to go through the preliminary testing on humans.  That should begin in about a year. 
      Results of this research were recently published in the Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology (and I thought "Sundry Wonderments was a big name).  The article stated that the anti-cocaine vaccine prevented the cocaine from reaching the brain and producing a high.  

      According to the lead researcher in this project, Ronald G. Crystal, "The vaccine eats up the cocaine in the blood like a little Pac-man before it can reach the brain."  He went on to say, "Even if a person who receives the anti-cocaine vaccine falls off the wagon, cocaine will have no effect."  He said that this is good news for those who are committed to breaking their addiction. 
      There are over 1.4 million cocaine users in the US alone.  I'm not sure what the stats are for world wide use.  Something like this vaccine could end it though.  I'm sure that there would be some cartels that wouldn't like it though.  They seem to get pretty ornery when they get unemployed.  Maybe they can all find work at McDonald's - or Wal-Mart.  
      The way it works is so simple in its concept, I'm surprised that nobody has thought of this before.  The idea is simple enough that I could have thought of it (but unfortunately I didn't, so I won't be the one who gets the profits from all this- dang).  They took bits of an ordinary cold  virus and attached them to a structure that mimics the structure of cocaine.  Then they injected it into the body and let the immune system and antibodies do what immune systems and antibodies do.  The immune system produced specific antibodies to fight this (the cold virus bits), and in the process learned how to recognize the cocaine as the hostile invader that it is.  The result is that as soon as any cocaine enters the body, the antibodies move in to destroy it.  Awesome!
      Crystal and his research crew at Weill Cornell Medical College are focusing on using this for those who are already addicted and want to quit.  But what does the word vaccine usually mean?  They are usually preventative, not curative.  I say vaccinate everybody, especially those who are at high risk (pun unintentional, but I like it) for even trying it.  They say that addiction is a disease, and we get vaccines to prevent diseases, so start preventing.  And if this works, then why stop with just cocaine?  Make vaccines against them all - ecstasy, heroin, meth, LSD, and even pot and alcohol - the whole bunch of them.  And while they're at it make a vaccine for nicotine too, that nasty, over-addicting crap  
      If no one can get addicted from these things in the first place and can't even get a buzz from them, then I hate to sound utopian, but seriously, our world would be doing much better.  Medical costs alone due to these scourges would be eliminated.  So would damages from influenced driving (if we can just get them to stop texting now)  Besides that the crime attributed to them would also be gone (people would steal things and rob people for other reasons instead - such as greed or envy, but not to get enough money for their next buzz).  Add to this a multi-billion dollar illicit industry that funnels funds into terrorism and other BS would be destroyed.  Seriously, all those cartels would have to go hit the unemployment lines, and then take jobs at McDonald's, Wal-Mart, and cheap, dirty, third world factories.  I don't believe in Karma per say, but those who do would really like this scenario. 
      I say hats off to Robert Crystal and his research team. 

Meaning Behind All the Boom Boom

Meaning Behind All the Boom Boom

      On their base level, fireworks in a celebration are nothing more than fireworks.  A final layer of spectacular glam to top off a day of celebration.  The Chinese had been using fireworks as an element of celebrations long before anyone in the west had even heard of such a thing.  The were very rarely used by them for war (there were only a few recorded instances of using rockets, but that was just to light up the night sky so that archers could see where to send a massive volley of arrows).  Once in a great while they were used to explode a fortified wall or gate.  For them the sounds of fireworks did not conjure up any images for them other than the image of fireworks.  

      When gunpowder was introduced to the west, however, that changed, but very slowly.  During the early-middle years of the Islamic culture both education and tolerance were highly valued.  So also were commerce and travel.  When the Europeans thought the world looked like a disk cut in half and two quarters, the Islamic society had accurate maps all the way from south-east China to south-west Europe.  Their ships traveled extensively through the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean and Black Seas.  They also plied the waters of the land locked Caspian Sea too.  In their travels they learned things.  They brought back books - many books, and they had them copiously translated.  Some of their libraries were so huge that they were not surpassed in size until the end of the 19th Century.  The libraries at Alexandria and Granada were the biggest.  Among those books were writings that included a description of how to make gunpowder. 

                                Two Medieval European Maps of the World

      Their tolerance at that time also allowed the occasional wanderer from Europe to come and visit those libraries.  Those who were the scientific thinkers of European society (and often shunned for doing so) would occasionally make the trek down to see these libraries.  Most often their visits were to the library at Granada, since that was the easiest one to get to.  These men were called alchemists or even sometimes wizards.  Most of these men were as close to being real scientists as European society then would allow, and some of them were just plain weird guys.  In the library at Granada some of them found those gunpowder recipes, which they translated into their own languages.  Some of the more secretive ones translated into their own made up languages and alphabets.  Thankfully for the historian some of the translations have survived - translations written by guys who weren't really weird.  
      "Grind charcoal into a powder.  Mix three parts ground charcoal with one part ground brimstone, and add to that two parts of the white crystals that grow on a stable wall.  Carefully grind them all together with water to make a thick paste.  Spread this paste into a thin sheet, and let it dry.  When it is completely dry carefully grind it into granules, and keep it far away from all heat or flame."  
      It was slow to catch on, but that recipe seriously changed the entire world's history.  The simple recipe has been altered and perfected quite a lot since then, but it still has the same three basic ingredients.  The ratios changed by quite a bit. 
      The explosive power of gunpowder was tested in new innovations.  During the Hundred Years Wars in the Battle of Orleans it was used to hurl giant rocks and boulders at the fortifications.  They thought this could be an easier alternative to the trebuchet, which took so long to set up.  The catapult and siege onager were large and bulky, and slow to move.  They used long wooden barrels as the first cannons (that's why they are called gun barrels today).  Well, they did more damage to their own army than they did to the enemy's walls.  They killed their own men and gun crews when these wooden cannons blew up in their faces.  Nevertheless, everyone saw the potential, and the new arms race was on.  Improvements were made again and again. 

                                Cannons at the Battle of Orleans

      By the latter 18th Century, during the time of the American Revolution there was no thought of going to war without gunpowder based weapons.  Not even among the various Native nations who lived around and among them. 
      When the "Revolution" began the last thing anyone here wanted was to become a nation separate from Britain.  In its most simplistic terms the "incident" began as an argument surrounding taxes.  Previous to the French and Indian War the colonists were not taxed.  Not at all.  The mother country wanted the colony to be able to thrive, so their fellow British citizens back home had to bear the colonials' share of the tax burden.  When young, brash Col. Washington almost singlehandedly brought the Seven Years War to the North American continent that policy had to change.  First of all many high ranking people from England saw first hand how well off the colonies had become.  The colonies had advanced to a point that they could now afford to pay their fair share.  Secondly, the war (caused by a colonial) cost the British citizens a lot of money, and the colonies should pay their fair share.  
      The colonies responded like a teenager who has gotten too big for his/her breeches.  "If you think we've grown up enough to pay taxes, then we've grown up enough to have our own members of Parliament."  It's like the parent who says, "You need to show some responsibility around here first, then I can grant you some more privileges."  Then the kid replies with something like, "If you let me use the car whenever I want, then I will show you responsibility.  Besides, you're not always responsible!"  
      Yes, it as a battle of wills within the family.  These British citizens of North America were actually proud to be part of Great Britain.  They were a part of the greatest empire on earth.  They had beaten out the Dutch, the Spanish, and finally the French.  They were on top.  They just wanted to be treated like an adult, without having to show the responsibilities of an adult (can any of you parents relate?).  
      The situation was amplified by three rabble rousers who had personal interests of their own - a brewer, a silversmith who fancied himself as a journalist, and a smuggler.  Add to that there was a whole group of men who thought that if a parliamentary position should be created for the colonies, then "that man should be me."  Some of them even, without one drop of royal blood thought they should be in the House of Lords.  
      Lexington and Concord was a complete cluster.  The colonials were not organized and were little more than a mob, and the British commander on the scene lost control of his own troops.  The family argument took a turn for the worse.  That was like the rebellious teenager who, God help him, slaps his mom, and in turn gets the crap beat out of him by his dad.  Restoration is now a difficult process at best.  
      By the time of Breed's Hill the Continental Congress were still attempting to seek restoration, but "dad" was really mad.  There was at the time of the battle a ship still en route to London with letters seeking that restoration.  The Continental Army was flying a flag that still had the Union Jack in the corner (it was to them more like a shire flag, with its own individuality, but still under the Crown and part of Great Britain).  The colonials placed the blame for the increased conflicts on the British commanders acting on their own.  

                         Flag of Continental Congress one of the flags flown by the Colonials

      Overnight, the colonials erected bunkers and other fortifications on Breed's Hill made out of bundles of sticks (called faggots).  They had enough of these "faggots" stacked together that they could not only stop musket balls, but even cannon balls.  This is why the battle is also called Bunker Hill.  The colonial British killed or wounded almost half of the British regular forces that day, but they were still greatly outnumbered.  The British regulars continued to march up that hill until they finally overwhelmed the rebels.  All the black powder fired that day made so much smoke that the sun was blotted out and the rebels had to feel their way out to escape. 
      The battle that day made restoration impossible, so after a year the Continental Congress drafted a Declaration of Independence, that was signed and ratified on July 4th, 1776.  
      When the fireworks are lit off in celebration and memorial of this, there is meaning behind all that boom boom and thick smoke.  When you hear the big booms, think of the eight, ten, and twelve pounder cannons being fired.  When some of the fireworks have a secondary series of small explosions, think about the volleys of muskets that were fired.  When you see the thick smoke blotting out the stars and maybe even the moon, think about the soldiers on both sides of this family fight gone bad feeling their way through the bunkers on Breed's Hill.  When you hear this and see this think of Camden, and  Brandywine, and Freeman's Farm (Saratoga), many other places, and Yorktown.  
      Yes, they are sometimes just fireworks, but they have much more meaning than that. 

                                 Battle of Bunker Hill/Breed's Hill

The Causes of Aging

      I'm going to try this again tonight.  Hopefully Blogger won't act weird tonight and won't erase my post when it's most of the way done - like it did last night.  I think the problem is in a new program installed into the operating system of the Blogger site.  They now consider the title field to be very important, and messages will pop up every 18 seconds if you do not fill in what they now call a "required field."  I don't like filling in that field, because I don't like how the titles look.  I prefer the way I have been doing it up to this point.  I think I know a way around this though.  
      With that said, on to today's post, that should have been yesterday's post, if I can remember how I worded everything last night.   

      The Human body is an amazing piece of machinery and a great work of art.  It continually regenerates itself, which is the technical definition of healing.  This is because there is an opposite force working against our bodies - increasing degeneration (a result of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, otherwise known as the Law of Entropy, which actually affects everything in the universe). 
      This degeneration is actually there all the time, from infancy to the time when our bodies finally give in to its effects, and our breath of life no longer has a valid place to live.  Throughout most of our lives our regenerating abilities outweigh the onslaught of of impeti trying to degenerate us.  Aging is actually (and by definition) the body's increasing lack of ability to regenerate.  The organ which most visibly shows signs of this is our skin. 

      This is why engineers and biologists from the University of Sheffield, UK in conjunction with a team of researchers from Proctor and Gamble conducted a series of tests of that oh so visible organ, the skin.  They just recently released the results of their studies in the publication "Nature Scientific Reports." 
      The answer to the question of "why do we age" can be found in something called "sleeping" stem cells, or rather the technical term progenitor cells residing in the skin.  The real answer is actually all the things that attack our bodies, up to and including our own occasional bouts of clumsiness or carelessness.  The result of these attacks, however, is our sleeping stem cells, and their reaction to these attacks, and this is where aging starts to happen. 
      According to their report these stem cells usually just "sleep."  They do not divide and replicate like other cells.  They just sit there doing nothing until they are activated.  They have all the same parts as other skin cells, such as mitochondria, cell wall, nuclei with chromosomes and DNA strands, etc.  They just do not divide and replicate. 
      When we injure our skin, whether from a small cut, a gash, a hard skin breaking bump, a tear, a smashing, or any type of burn some of the stem cells in the immediate area of injury will suddenly turn into regular skin cells.  They will begin to divide and replicate just like the other cells, and this helps speed up the healing process.  These progenitor cells will also activate when the pool of regular cells decreases for whatever reason. 
      Once a sleeping stem cell "awakens" and begins to divide and replicate it will never go back to being a stem cell.  Not a single one of the replications will go into sleep mode to be saved for later.  When a stem cell is used, it is used up.  It's gone.  This is where the phenomenon called aging comes in. 
      We therefore have a limited number of progenitor cells.  No matter how large that number starts out as, that number is finite.  It has an end.  Each successive injury to our skin causes us to lose more sleeping stem cells.  As we go through life we start to have less of them and less of them.  This is why the older we get, the harder it is for our injuries to heal.  We use up our progenitor, or sleeping stem cells. 
      Co-author of the project Xinshn Li of the University of Sheffield explained that another one of their findings in this matter is that individual stem cells, can be injured or stressed prior to waking up, or being activated.  These injuries which happen on a cellular level can come from various chemicals, radiation, or UV light.  These stressors can mutate the stem cell.  While in sleep mode these mutated cells will cause no ill effects.  However, when due to a normal, ordinary, run of the mill injury, or just regular depletion, one of these stress mutated stem cells activates and begins to replicate, troubles begin. 
      One of these mutated stem cells can start to replicate real quickly and become skin cancer.  Our lungs and eyes operate in the same way.  They have many (or rather start out with many) sleeping stem cells. This is why the continual onslaught from cigarette smoke is so bad.  It uses up all the stem cells in the lungs, and also mutates many of them prior to their awakening. 
      Bones also have them.  I once knew someone who raced motorcycles, and had broken some bones numerous times.  After one horrific crash doctors declared that if there was another break in the same area of certain lower leg bones, that break would probably never heal.  Those doctors at the time couldn't say exactly why the bone probably wouldn't heal after a fifth break of the same area of the same bone.  It was just years of experience and observation that made them know that this is the case.  Because of Dr. Li and all of his colleagues we can now confidently explain why this is.  It is because the stem cells there are too depleted to be of much good for healing another break. 

Blah

I just spent two hours writing a post for today.  The blogger site was acting weird, and then made me log in again.  In the process I lost everything I wrote, even though I saved it several times.  It's late, and I have to go to bed.  I have to work in the morning.  Blah.

Building a Primitive Wood Fire Kiln - Part One

      I didn't post anything this past weekend, because I was busy doing something that I could post about later (having to work from 7:30 am to 10:15 pm on Thursday didn't help much either).  I was working on building a new wood fire kiln.  The style of this kiln is a primitive style. A kiln of this style can be used to make pots, mugs and things, but with a firing loss of about 30 to 40 percent, which is normal for this kind of kiln.  Also, the heat is hot enough to create a hot bisque, but not hot enough to get a very good glaze.  It can't get up to stoneware temp.  It does get hot enough for a low fire glaze (cones 05-03), but it is a very messy kiln, and ash gets on the glaze.  This kind of kiln works best for making bricks (which in turn can be used to make a clean firing kiln, or whatever you would want bricks for). 
      I made one before and used it to make many bricks.  I also used it to attempt a couple firings of mugs, with the usual losses.  The ashes in the glazing portion however made the mugs too textured to be usable.  In that the outside air temperatures prevent the heat from the kiln to reach vitrifying temperatures on the outside of the kiln, it was very susceptible to rain damage.  Therefore I made a shelter to cover it.  One time during the late winter/early spring we had one of those severely windy days common for that time of year.  It was a day of sustained winds of 50 mph, with gusts up to 70 mph or more.  One of those gusts came and tore the roof right off the shelter.  It twisted and snapped the 4x4 posts that held up the roof.  Then the wind sent the whole roof crashing down on the kiln.  It only crushed the chimney, which was easily repairable.  I used it to make some more bricks a few times, but after another year the rains weakened it too much and it collapsed.     
      I have several building projects coming up for which I will want bricks (fireplaces, chimneys, a small bridge to go over a creek, and of course more kilns that are not subject to rain damage).  That is why I started building a new kiln this weekend.  

                                                   Above:  Pictures of my old kiln

      Several years ago I found clay on my property.  It is a fairly large deposit about four to six feet deep.  It is a grey clay, which is rare for around here, but it still has iron impurities in it, making it fire to a reddish brown color anyway.  That's because there is so much iron in this part of the world.  For instance, you can throw even a weak magnet into any exposed dirt, and it will be covered with iron rich sand and pebbles.  I had my clay tested at one of the local universities, and it is a clay composed of volcanic ash.  That's odd, because the nearest volcano is Yellowstone's caldera, which is about 1000 miles from here.  The clay is in a low spot on my land (the rest is gradual hills of moraine sand - glacial till).  The clay/ash layer is over the moraine layer in that low spot, and probably washed down there after the eruption.  This washing in would account for it picking up the iron impurities.  Figuring in the surface area of the surrounding hillocks compared to the average 5.5 ft. depth of the deposit, the original blanket of ash would have been between 6 to 8 inches deep.  That's quite an eruption with Yellowstone as the only culprit.  If it was this deep here, I can only wonder how thick it was across the rest of Minnesota and Wisconsin, not to mention the thickness it must have been in the upper Mississippi system and the High Plains.  
      We are told that Yellowstone blows every 75 to 100 million years, and that the last time it blew was about 50 million years ago, so it won't blow again for at least another 25 million years.  I think they tell us that so we won't panic.  The raw physical evidence here contradicts that though.  The first being that the deposit sits on TOP of the glacial till, which wasn't even exposed until about 11,000 to 8000 years ago, after the Pleistocene, and then again the Younger Dryas was over, and the glacier sheets finally melted.  Another problem with their stories of comfort is that there are only a few inches of soil above the ash/clay layer.  Basically it is only the root layer that is covering it.  That makes this layer fairly recent.  How recent I can't tell for sure.  However, this ash later might answer the question of what happened to the Copper Age/Early Bronze Age cultures that developed here and then suddenly collapsed and disappeared, being replaced by primitive hunter-gatherer cultures.  

                                      Yellowstone's volcano is about 1000 miles away

      Anyway, here's how you build a primitive wood fire kiln.  Start off by selecting a piece of ground that is level and close enough to the clay deposit.  If you have to bring in your clay, then just pick a level spot.  Put in a series of sticks into the ground for your perimeter.  Include the chimney in this layout.  The sticks should be ideally about 3/4 of an inch thick (about 1.5 cm).  Don't exceed and inch thick.  After they are in place start weaving thin pieces of willow into the framework, like a very open weave basket.  This is the wattle part of the building technique known as "wattle and daub."  

      As you work your way up the chimney you need to put in support sticks for a the flue.  Without a flue, the chimney won't draw properly.  After you've woven up about six inches above the flue, you need to start applying the "daub."  The daub is a mixture of mostly clay, with dried grass mixed in.  The grass provides strength for a regular wattle and daub wall, but for something like a kiln or a fired brick it provides small channels for expanding gasses to escape.  These gasses come from burnable material inside the heating clay.  When the kiln is fired all the woven sticks will burn away.  The gasses from this need to go somewhere.  Without the dried grass to let them out the clay would just blow up, rendering all your work as useless.  

      When applying the daub you have to push the clay into the framework from both sides.  For the flue you will just pile the daub mixture onto the support sticks until it's level.  After putting the daub onto the chimney up to about six inches past the flue, you may start applying daub all around the rest of the lower part of the framework. 

      The pictures shown right now are from the old kiln I made.  I will take pictures of the new one as this project progresses.