The Terror of Risk

It seems that the media is like the creepy Nazi from The Marathon Man who sorrowfully remarks that in the previous days torture they had killed the nerve in the tooth that he was using to cause the Dustin Hoffman character pain. He then continues that they would have to drill into a healthy tooth to expose the nerve so they could continue the torture.

What I mean is that the media is constantly bringing some low risk, next to impossible event or complication and hitting us with it so that we will a) pay attention so that we can avoid the horrible fate and b) advocate the removal of all risk of this ever happening.

Now there are some campaigns that make a lot of sense. I can remember when pretty much everyone drove around in cars without wearing seatbelts while smoking. The causality and probability of both seatbelts and smoking were pretty much well established. On the other hand the fear of terrorists, contaminants in our drinking water and food is pretty much a fabrication created by exposing the incredibly improbable as possibly happening to you.

The latest is toxic epidermal necrolysis and its association with fairly common medications. What they do not tell you is that the necrolysis only happens once in a trillion prescriptions. No, fear sells almost as good a sex. In this case there is an incredibly small risk when you take certain medications that your skin will fall off in a horribly debilitating and quite often fatal drug reaction (LINK TO STORY) . There is no doubt that the people who suffer this reaction deserve our support and sympathy but they should not be used as a fear tactic to remove perfectly good medications from circulation.

This is in fact the reason why so many drugs fail in trials. There are many drugs that have been tested and have worked well for common conditions. The problem is that one in a thousand or one in five hundred patients will have an adverse reaction so the drug is withdrawn. We need our medical societies to step forward and set or recommend proper regulations for drugs so that as long as adverse reactions fall below a certain threshold (I'd say one in a thousand would be OK as long as I am not the one) the pharmaceutical manufacturers would be protected.

I don't know that pretty soon we will be chewing on willow branches and rubbing eels on our warts if we don't start accepting a certain level of risk.

LINK TO WIKIPEDIA PAGE
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Trust the French: Natural Recycling

Found on the internet ... it made me smile. I like the paradox of using the highest level of animation to produce a minimalist video with no real dialogue and simple plotlines. This reminded me of the Skrat clips from the Ice Age videos (which also made me smile) and the amazing introduction to Wall-E (which left me stunned with its brilliance).

The editors at Boing Boing make the excellent point that although Miniscule video clips are spread all over the internet the French animators are trying to make a living at this and we should feel motivated to purchase their products.

OK, Now this Guy wins the Crystal Growing Competition

I am not a big fan of post-modernist art. I just don't get performance art and don't like dissonance and abstraction.

This I get.

This guy turned an entire apartment into a crystal growing experiment and called it "Seizure". A number of students at the end of the crystal growing competition looked at the bottom of their beakers and commented on the thick pad of well formed crystals that covered the bottom. Now imagene a whole apartment covered with those crystals.

I would have some concerns about exposure to the crystalline dust by going into the apartment and there is such a thing as copper poisoning but on a cool scale this is way cool.

LINK TO ARTIST WEB SITE

New Brunswick in the News: Tungsten

The CBC is reporting that a company in New Brunswick has found a mineable ore body that it proposes to work for tungsten. It would appear that the most important user for the product is the nation of China. In fact the company homepage has a Chinese language link about the project. I knew about zinc and copper (and in fact antimony but we don't mine it anymore) but this is the first that I had heard about tungsten in New Brunswick.

LINK to GeoDex

Tungsten has a number of uses that relate to its physical and chemical properties of high density, hardness and relative inertness. It seems to be an important component of speciality steels where performance at high temperatures is important. There is an alloy called high speed steel that can be up to 18% tungsten. Of course, the feasibility of the mine is related to the demand for the metal and the cost of mining in New Brunswick.

Once again we will need to carry out the dreadful algebra to determine if the upheaval of our environment (and probably public financial support) will equal 250 resource based jobs. just look at the GeoDex webpage picture of the mine sight and it just looks like New Brunswick. Of course you could argue that NB has lots of scrub forest and could easily live with a couple hundred acres less if it meant real jobs. I am glad however that a full environmental impact statement is going to be done. I would also like to know if this is simply an ore extraction or if there will be some processing of the ore before it leaves Canada.

Environmental Chemistry Experiment in Fredericton

This is the basis for an ongoing environmental nightmare in Fredericton.

First you spill some chemicals (LINK to story): namely 2,700 litres of chromium trioxide spilled by Custom Machine & Hardchrome.

Second you MAIL the following notice to the affected people (LINK to announcement): "The Department of Health continues to advise about a dozen homeowners and several businesses in the Evergreen Park area outside Fredericton not to consume their well water, or use it for cooking, bathing or any other use which would bring it into contact with their body."

Third you ignore the affected people so that an older couple ends up drinking the rainwater from their roof downspout. (LINK to story).

This is really as bad as it gets environmentally speaking. This is a citation from the Wikipedia page on CrO3:

"Chromium trioxide is highly toxic, corrosive, and carcinogenic. Chromium trioxide may cause cancer and/or heritable genetic damage. It is explosive when mixed with combustible material. It is toxic in contact with skin and if swallowed and very toxic by inhalation. CrO3 causes severe burns and may cause sensitisation by inhalation and skin contact. It is also toxic: danger of serious damage to health by prolonged exposure through inhalation. There is a possible risk of impaired fertility. CrO3 is very toxic to aquatic organisms may cause long-term adverse effects in the aquatic environment."

This is the stuff that made Erin Brokovitch famous. I just hope that Custom Machine & Hardchrome has very very good insurance and that this won't just be a case where the company just folds up and the province is left with the clean-up. I do however wish that someone would offer the old couple a cup of cold water in Jesus' name.

X-rays in your life

I love this paper on X-rays generated from unrolling Scotch tape in a vacuum. They even proved it by using the X-rays to take a picture of a researchers finger. To do that the researcher would have to have his hand in a vacuum chamber long enough to expose the film. That is loving your research. This is the kind of work I would love to be involved in. Absolute genius.

LINK to Article

National Chemistry Week Crystal Growing

It is National Chemistry Week (LINK) and the highpoint of the week will be Mole Day (October 23 ... 10.23 ... you know .... Avogadro's Number ... 6.02 x 10(23) ... man, it kills the mood when you have to explain everything).

So, in the first year chemistry class we tried growing crystals of Potassium Aluminum Sulphate ...


And Copper (II) sulphate.

All in all the crystals were very nice. The class set of crystals can be seen by following the link below.

2008-10-21(CH1013XL)

ABU Riverkeepers

So, the ABU Biology Society and their faculty sponsor Penny Humby got us all up on a rainy Saturday morning to drag other people's garbage out of a nameless brook we had never really noticed before. This professor took his camera and whenever he took a photo the students would all look sad and feign intense interest in gum wrappers.

From 2008-09-27(BI3513Riverkeepr)

So I passed the camera off to a student and suddenly the other students were posing like models for the Eatons catalogue (go figure).

From 2008-09-27(BI3513Riverkeepr)

So they took my camera and wandered off to play Riverkeeper in their own 'hood and they even formed a gang called the Keypurz .. here they are with their peeps flashing their gang signs. ]

From 2008-09-27(BI3513Riverkeepr)

Some people took Riverkeeping to a whole new level of personal participation.

From 2008-09-27(BI3513Riverkeepr)

Finally at the end of a long wet morning the students met a hillbilly and his pet snake.

From 2008-09-27(BI3513Riverkeepr)

This is a slideshow of the rest of the photos:

Thanks to all the students that participated and for the Biology Society for getting us together. And thanks to Somer for taking the photos of students with smiles.

Things that Make Me Laugh: Science Ads

Chemists get a reputation as humourless, soul-destroying trolls that hide under bridges and kill any hope that wanders by. It is therefore quite pleasing to see a thin layer chromatography firm depart from the stereotype and show a sense of humour in this clip that is in fact an extension of a famous Monty Python skit. The cinematography and acting are very good for this sort of thing so it must have been a labour of love for the owners of the company.

LINK TO VIDEO

Internet Serendipity

Came across both of these on the same day and the serendipity of it all it made me laugh ...

"The Scriptures are so chop'd and minc'd, and as they are now so Printed, stand so broken and divided, that not only the Common People take the Verses usually for distinct Aphorisms, but even Men of more advanc'd Knowledge in reading them, lose much of the strength and force of Coherence, and the Light that depends on it" John Locke

CHEM 1013 Lab 2 Penny Data

So we have been working in the penny library for a fortnight now and we have counted and measured pennies ....

And boiled pennies in acid ...

All in the name of science. So now it is time for us to collect our data as a class. Use the comments section of this post to give the densities that you measured. Give them as YEAR (Density gcm-3) [so you should report them as 1993 (7.8 gcm-3)]. This way you will be able to compare your data in your formal report with the data from the class.

Charles We Hardly Knew Ye

Science is done by human beings and we as humans share much that is mundane about our lives. There is a new book out now that explores the real, human side of scientists that loom large in our minds and imaginations. Check out this description ...



"He suffered from incessant retching or vomiting, usually brought on by fatigue; and from painful bouts of wind that churned around after meals and obliged him to sit quietly in a private room until his body behaved more politely. Reading between the lines, his guts were noisy and smelly. "I feel nearly sure that the air is generated somewhere lower down than stomach," he told one doctor plaintively in 1865, "and as soon as it regurgitates into the stomach the discomfort comes on." He was equally forthright with his cousin...: "all excitement & fatigue brings on such dreadful flatulence that in fact I can go nowhere." When he did go somewhere, he needed privacy after meals, "for, as you know, my odious stomach requires that."He also had trouble with his bowels, frequently suffering from constipation and vulnerable to the obsession with regularity that stalked most Victorians. He developed crops of boils in what he called "perfectly devilish attacks" on his backside, making it impossible to sit upright, and occasional eczema. There were headaches and giddiness. He probably had piles as well."

Sort of makes you see Charles Darwin in a whole new way don't you think?

LINK TO BOOK

Five Days to Get Your Life in Order

It would appear that they are about to switch on the Large Hadron Collider. You may remember this installation for the initial word that it would be able to find the "God particle" and later on that when the thing was turned on it would cause the existing universe to wink out of existence. It would appear that someone has corrected the math on that issue.

I especially like the calming reassurance: "As the Safety Assessment Group writes, “Each collision of a pair of protons in the LHC will release an amount of energy comparable to that of two colliding mosquitoes, so any black hole produced would be much smaller than those known to astrophysicists.” "

LINK TO ARTICLE

So if you have anyone to apologize to or to show some love you have until September 10th.

It still makes me think of this cartoon:

LINK TO LARGER IMAGE

CHEM 2113 Lab #1 Class Data

This is the post for the class to combine it's data collected in the first lab. I want everyone to log into the comments section of this post and leave any data that you have on the compounds.

for example;

Compound E: m.p. 123.5 - 125.0 oC
Compound E: TLC (CH2Cl2) Rf = 0.123
Compound E: TLC (acetone) Rf = 0.789

Welcome Back: Questions for Prof. H.

1. Why blog?

Three reasons really: ego, access and anonymity

Ego: The nature of the internet ensures that this is a public forum with a memory. People throw stuff on the internet without thinking about it much but it all gets stored somewhere. With that in mind a person has to believe that they have something to say that other people need to read.

Access: This blog will pretty much be "active" 24/7 which means that it can function as a forum for the courses anytime that a student has opportunity to work on the course. Perhaps I will not be signed on but a message can be left that another student might be able to read and help.

Anonymity: Some students just do not do the "face-to face thing" very well. They may come to my office with specific goals and questions and then let the stress of the encounter cut the meeting short or incomplete. A blog gives a student a chance to think things through and make sure that they get what they need (or at least they have the opportunity). The anonymity is important in that it is possible for the student to participate without me or their peers developing a negative opinion of them.

2. How would this blog be different from other online forums?

This could be done internal to the university computer system. I noticed that when Union University had a tornado tear apart their campus they had an off-site blog ready to go (LINK) and that reinforced in my mind the importance of having multiple lines of communication.

I see that some courses are supported by Facebook pages and that has two problems in my mind: a loss of anonymity and Facebook contact with the professor (both of which can have their problems if you tend to be a bit wild on Facebook).

3. What will you use this blog for?

If you look over the posts prior to this one you will see that there are three basic types of post:

a) Course information / discussion quick announcements especially for students that may have missed something, I might be able to emphasize here. I will also routinely post links and comments to information on the internet that relates to concepts taught in the course.

b) Course assignments: This is something that I have tried before and I don't think I have it quite right yet but would like to try again. I will post a problem and the class will work together to post a solution to the problem in the comment section of the post and only students that log in and post will share in the marks.

c) Commentary: Sometimes a professor just has to vent.

And a Tree Shall Lead Them

As if we needed more reasons to love trees there is a science story out today that not only are trees our only proven hope to sequester atmospheric CO2 it would appear that trees are also able to remove airborne pollutants and convert them to amino acids.

LINK TO ARTICLE

So it would appear that the trees are important to us for a number a reasons. It would make for an interesting social and cultural study to look at populations that have extensive wood supplies and compare them with similar groups that do not. I bet that wooded societies are healthier and happier and probably wealthier. The anthropologists talk to us about Stone Age and Bronze Age societies but there must be a Wooden Age in there somewhere. I would guess that our complex master - slave relationship with our cellulosic neighbours must be an important part of our development.

In our own little corner of the world we have a property here at ABU where the campus sits on a much larger parcel of land that was clear-cut in the early 1970's. That is our best bet for the photo below. Notice that the highway has not been twinned and the old farm property that was here before ABU is still intact. In terms of the clear cut it makes for an interesting comment that the parts that were not clear cut are the high ground between Gorge Road and the Gorge Brook, the Gorge Brook area itself and a boggy area in the North - East sector of the property.

What I like about this early view of the property is that it clearly shows the property borders since I am sure the woodcutters would have cut right to the border with the neighbours. It also clearly shows where the logging roads are and that might be useful for access to the woods today.

If we now look at the 2005 Google Earth view of the ABU property we can see that the scrub forest has covered the property again. Up close it is a nasty tangle of poplar, birch and swamp maple with a seasoning of conifers. But it is treed and starting the natural process of succession from cleared land to conifer forest. What is also clear is the gaping hole in the property that is the surface pit for fill that worked the property from the time of the last clear cut and left about a quarter of the property stripped down below the subsoil leaving an almost Mordor like blasted moonscape of scum, slime and tufts of mis-begotten grass.



Well, it looks like we are going to be here for a while and it is clear that the good Lord gave us trees to save us from ourselves so I think we had better start planting some trees.

"Recycled" Water ... It's About Time

I love this article in today's New York Times.

LINK TO NYT ARTICLE

I have been lecturing for years that it is the mark of the civilized Western society that we can urinate, defecate and dump chemical waste into our own drinking water and not suffer for it. We can directly connect the success of urbanization with municiple water treatment systems. I always say that more people are alive today because of municiple water treatment than modern medicine ... but no one listens.

The author (not journalist in this case) visits a new water treatment plant and realizes that the purpose of the plant is to treat sewerage and return it to the city drinking water reservoir. The first response is "Yuck" but there is some really well developed science and chemistry here.

What really gets me cranking are the self righteous rural folk that claim that they have their own well and will not "pollute" their bodies with treated water. In most rural settings your well is down stream from someones septic field ... or a cemetery. At least with municple water someone is responsible for monitoring the water quality.

There is one line in the article that I really like and it shows the two objective and subjective sides of the science involved:

"You could argue that in coming to terms with wastewater as a resource, we’ll take better care of our water. At long last, the “everything is connected” message, the bedrock of the environmental movement, will hit home. In this view, once a community is forced to process and drink its toilet water, those who must drink it will rise up and change their ways. Floor moppers will switch to biodegradable cleaning products. Industry will use nontoxic material. Factory farms will cut their use of antibiotics. Maybe we’ll even stop building homes in the desert."

I think I am going to get a copy of the authors book.

LINK TO AMAZON BOOK LISTING

Physical Science in the Olympics: Air Quality

There is a fight going on right now between the BBC

LINK TO BBC STORY ON AIR QUALITY

And the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee

LINK TO OFFICIAL OLYMPICS SITE ON AIR QUALITY

In essence the BBC is saying that the air quality is bad and anyone can see that it is bad. In fact they have been measuring it and the numbers confirm that it is bad. For example, today (08.08.08) they obtained a reading of 191 micrograms per cubic meter of the worst kind of solid particle pollution called PM10 pollution. The WHO cites 50 micrograms per cubic meter as the the criteria for acceptable air but raised that to 150 for Beijing.

On the other side, the organizers of the Beijing Olympics are saying:

" Du said in the past seven days the Air Pollutant Index (API), an indicator of the air quality, in Beijing has been all below Level II, indicating excellent or good air quality.
"Maybe the fog makes it not a nice picture to look at the Bird's Nest or the Water Cube, but the monitor south of the two stadiums reads the API at 80 today. It conveyed a strong message that our efforts had paid off since August," he said. An API rating of 51-100 (level II) means good quality. "

What it comes down to is the number and how it was determined. It is amazing that scientists are capable of using modern technology to measure the same physical phenomenon and get such dramatically different numbers. Physical science is supposed to be above this sort of thing. If the data are distorted then who is distorting them? Is it more likely that the BBC is knowingly publishing false or skewed numbers to support a story and embarrass the host city and country or that the Olympic organizers have "adjusted" their numbers to look better. At least the BBC admits to a 20% error in their measurements. There is another possibility that both sets of numbers are false. We cannot know but there is a third voice on the issue from within China and on that blog this is a picture of the air quality today.

LINK TO BLOG

What we can know is how well the athletes respond to the air. According to the SOURCE OF ALL KNOWLEDGE (Wikipedia) an average human has a deep breath volume of about 5 liters. An adult will make about 40 deep respiration's per minute during physical exertion. So that is about 200 L of Beijing air a minute or one cubic meter of air every five minutes. You have to believe that even elite athletes pulling that kind of air into their lungs for that period of time will have to see an effect. This is the reverse of what high altitude training does to prepare and athlete. At high altitude the air pressure is lower so there is less oxygen, in response the body increases lung capacity and the number of red blood cells to capture as much oxygen as possible. When the athlete returns to sea level there is a short term benefit that can improve performance. In this case however what we are looking at are athletes that can perform well in bad air. I do believe that China may well have an advantage here.

As a post script to this issue there is also a bit of discussion about the air quality of these Olympics compared to air quality in previous Olympic cities such as Athens and Mexico City. According to the BBC this is what athletes faced in previous Olympics.

Other Olympic cities on the opening day of the Olympics:

London (United Kingdom) 21
Athens (Greece) 43
Sydney (Australia) 20
Seoul (Korea) 41

Beijing (China) 191

Source: World Bank 2004 and BBC 2008

Liberal Arts Science: Opposing the Darkness

Teaching Science in a liberal arts university one often loses a bit of perspective. The reality is that we as a society have to come to some sort of agreement as to what basic level of science knowledge is necessary for functional adults. This is especially true for educated adults since we live in a world largely defined by its relationship with the products of science and technology. That is why we have science requirements for arts students ... the question haw effective a single isolated science credit is in a fourty credit degree. I don't know but I would hope our students would avoid the problem demonstrated in this video. One might even hope that their religious studies courses would explain mystery.

What is endearing about the video below is the completely unashamed attitude that personal assertion is equal to truth.

Christians Behaving Badly

Pound for pound I would say that the weirdest person in the Old Testament is Elisha. Weird stuff just happened around him.

"Elisha Is Jeered 23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. 25 And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria."

What I find striking about this passage is the commonplace almost mundane reporting style. If we were blogging about a trip between Fredericton and Moncton we might mention the high price of corn at roadside vegetable stands in the same tone that our faithful biblical reporter indicates that 42 men get mauled by two bears (OK, I know the plausibility sensors are ringing on this incident but you must remember that people back then were addicted to cheap Kung Fu movies where the bad guys would willingly line up to get their faces smacked).

It would, as well, appear that Christians that travel are not always on their best behaviour. I, of course, like you all have been tailgated and passed dangerously by a maniacal person with "Honk if you love Jesus" bumperstickers (which is actually a quite clever way of making you NOT honk at a bad driver). It would appear that more recently the standards of Travelling Christians Behaving Badly has been raised by Victoria Osteen who apparently struck a flight attendant that got in her way down with hemorrhoids. It looks to me like a strange cross between Career Barbie and Harry Potter. What is that worship song we sing ... "Just Like in the Days of Elisha"?

LINK TO COMPLETE STORY