21

Chemistry / Re: Spectrophotometry question

« on: 11/11/2005 11:46:41 »

Tyrosine absorbs more in the UV spectrum.  Measure absorbance around 280nm and you'll see a big difference.  



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22

Chemistry / Re: what water do I drink free from floride and chemic

« on: 11/11/2005 11:39:23 »

I don't really buy into the big fluoride conspiracy theory, but I do agree that filtering your home drinking water is a very good idea.  Tap filtration systems are very cheap, refill filters are about $20 each and last a few months.

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23

Physiology & Medicine / Re: How can some people eat such hot chillis ?

« on: 25/10/2005 02:14:23 »

I bet those chickens are delicious.

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24

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Food Poisoning

« on: 25/10/2005 02:11:56 »

Enteric bacteria also help to stave off infection from invading bacteria.  It's my understanding that animals have an even greater degree of enterics in their digestive tracts than we do, allowing less biological "real estate" for the invaders to take hold and form colonies.  

Be sure to eat your yogurt.  



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25

General Science / Re: Glyconutrients

« on: 25/10/2005 02:07:03 »

The term "Glyconutrients" covers a broad range of biomolecules used by the body.  Sugars and glycoproteins both fall under this category.  Unfortunately, there is no single organ that produces them.  

In the case of the latter two, they are synthesized in the cells that need them.  It is incredibly inefficient to be shuttling proteins around the body since the blueprint for making them (DNA) is sitting right there, so they tend to be made where they're needed.  

The essential sugars are all synthesized by various pathways in the body.  There are far too many to list where they are upregulated and where they are downregulated.  Rest assured they are all made by enzyme action upon glucose or its metabolites in glycolysis.  

Random mutation or environmental factors could contribute to deficiencies in glyconutrients, but the health effects of this and wether simply eating them (especially the glycoproteins) will fix the problem are under debate.  



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26

Chemistry / Re: synthesis of nitric acid

« on: 25/10/2005 01:54:58 »

This wouldn't be for the purpose of nitrating glycerol, would it?  because that would be very foolish...




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27

Chemistry / Re: aspartame

« on: 08/10/2005 19:41:39 »

quote:Originally posted by jo

Thanks for stopping by and giving me the info.  Much appreciated.  Hubby has a non-cancerous brain tumor and he has been a big diet coke and aspartame user since he is diabetic as well.  I hear this stuff was passed though the FDA for finacial benefits of certain politicians pockets and now we get to pay the price in more ways than one.  Aggrivating.

Thanks for the welcome.  Jo

keep learning to stay young

Donald Rumsfeld (our current Secretary of Defense) was CEO for Searle (a division of Monsanto that created Nutrasweet) before he was involved in politics.  He called in a few favors to get it passed.   A lot of people were paid off to see this get approved.   The ban on it was actually upheld in a specially appointed 3-2 committee until the FDA installed a 6th member to tie the vote and the Monsanto-paid head of the FDA cast the tie-breaking vote.

Monsanto is an evil, evil company that does not care about your health or well-being, only that you consume their products.  

It just occurred to me how Orwellian the name Nutrasweet is.  Wow.  



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28

Chemistry / Re: sodium chlorate

« on: 08/10/2005 19:32:23 »

quote:Originally posted by itsjustme

yes, there was gas on both electrodes. can you please explain to me the gas law equation.

PV=nRT

This is in any basic chemistry book.  n=# moles of the gas, which is a fucntion of the mass.  Gas laws and stochiometry are a little too involved to write up in a post here, I recommend going out to getting yoursef a chemistry textbook.

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29

Chemistry / Re: chem h.w. help

« on: 08/10/2005 19:28:13 »

Chris is completely correct in that your overall precision is limited by your least number of significant figures anywhere in the calculation.

As for the reading on your colorimeter, the number you record will be dependent on if it's an analog or digital gauge that you read the absorbance from.  If it's analog, you estimate the last digit and give yourself a +/-5 error in that digit's place.  For instance, if you the gauge reads halfway between 1.2 and 1.3 (purely hypothetical examples) you would record 1.25 with a +/- 0.05 error.  This gives you three sig figs to work with.  

If you have a digital readout, just record the number as shown and assume +/- 2 in the last significant digit as your error.

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30

Chemistry / Re: what water do I drink free from floride and chemic

« on: 08/10/2005 19:22:46 »

quote:Originally posted by daveshorts

Just to make you really paranoid if the water is in a plastic bottle it will probably be leaking plasticisers into the water... very small quantities but hey

I was going to mention the same thing but I didn't want to instill any more fear of trace chemical levels into someone that's obviously concerned with it.  

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31

Chemistry / Re: question about HPLC

« on: 08/10/2005 19:21:13 »

Polarity of a compound affects retention time, but is not the only factor, size, shape, and orientation of functional groups affect it as well.  But aside from that, the resonance intermediates of nitrophenol would serve to stabilize (i.e. delocalize the charge) the molecule, effecting a greater retention time in a hydrophobic stationary phase.





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32

That CAN'T be true! / Re: Salt & Capsicum

« on: 02/10/2005 13:00:58 »

My guess is that salt displaces the capsaicin in the taste receptors on the tongue...I don't think it chemically reacts with it.  

I don't think salting your face would stop the effects of capsicum spray.  Your best bet for quick recovery from pepper spray would be an alcohol (keep it outta your eyes though) or some sort of low viscosity oil.  Capsaicin is highly soluble in lipids and alcohols, not so much in water.  



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33

Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Re: Cells are like humans!!!

« on: 02/10/2005 12:57:10 »

Quorum sensing is way cool.  I have a Scientific American where they interview the woman who isolated the compound used by bacteria (all kinds of varied species) to "communicate" with each other.  It's the only biomolecule I've ever seen that uses boron!



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34

Physiology & Medicine / Re: How can some people eat such hot chillis ?

« on: 02/10/2005 12:52:39 »

Great explanation, Chris.  I always kinda wondered if tolerance to hot foods worked like tolerance to some psychoactive drugs.  

I've been slowly developing a tolerance to heat by eating a Mexican place over the last 4 years that serves a salsa that you could strip paint with.  

Indian food no longer tastes the slightest bit hot to me. (though it still tastes great) I pretty much have to eat some seriously evil Thai or just cook something myself to feel a real heat anymore.  Dave's Insanity Sauce is a nice addition to my hotter meals.  I swear it must be 99% pure capsaicin.  



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35

Chemistry / Re: Home Made SuperGlue

« on: 02/10/2005 12:47:05 »

As he said, you can make a glue-like substance from water and flour.  

Actual superglue production requires things like toluene and cyanoacrylate... nasty stuff that you don't want in your house in large quantities.  

Trust me, I'm on medical leave from the lab for a couple weeks for toluene exposure.  It's not fun.  



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36

Chemistry / Re: sodium chlorate

« on: 02/10/2005 12:44:41 »

You probably still had a large amount of sodium chloride in your solution which was the solid you saw.  There may or may not have been any sodium chlorate present.  Maybe you can try collecting the hydrogen gas from the reaction (if any was generated...did you observe a gas evolving?)  and using a gas law equation to calculate moles of H2 gas and thus moles of sodium chlorate you produced.  Stoichiometry will tell you if any NaCl was left.  







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37

Chemistry / Re: what water do I drink free from floride and chemic

« on: 02/10/2005 12:40:02 »

You could buy distilled water and drink that.  


Personally, I just use a water filter on my faucet.  The water still tastes good (distilled does NOT) and the filter takes down concentrations of ions and organics to ppb/ppt levels as well as filtering out bacterial/viral particles.  Filters will run you about $15 per month.  





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38

Chemistry / Re: hydrochloric acid

« on: 02/10/2005 12:35:41 »

13M is about as concentrated as you can get HCl...in fact if you buy "Concentrated HCl" from a chemical vendor, that's exactly what you will get.

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39

Chemistry / Re: Calibration Curves

« on: 20/09/2005 09:30:16 »

The response is assumed to be linear in the above calibration curve.... the concentration of standard may be increasing logarithmically, geometrically or what have you, but the response per point with fit into a y=mx+b line...

Also, if you're getting measurements of 0.0051 to a 0.01 curve, then your curve is flawed to begin with as your lowest point is above an expected measurement..



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40

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Klonopin & Anxiety Attacks

« on: 19/09/2005 09:22:34 »

Are you having any other symptoms of anxiety besides the tingling?  I had issues with anxiety attacks a while back and had some tingling/numbness in my extremities but that was by far the least of the problems...  

Klonopin and drugs in that class work by potentiating GABA binding to its receptors on presynaptic neurons.  GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system...benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and alcohol all stimulate the binding of GABA to GABA-A receptors, inhibiting all kinds of biochemical activations, including things like your facial tingling.  

To put it shortly, it may or may not be anxiety.  It's good that you had some tests done...if your only symptom is the facial tingling I don't know that it's worth risking a benzo addiction to treat it.  See a neurologist to rule out anything serious.  



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