exchemist

Think what you are now proposing: to add an energy storage system, as well all the other stuff I have itemised. If you are going to do all that you might as well run a static EC engine somewhere, convert the energy to a convenient form and put that in your on-board storage system. In short, run a generator and store the energy electrically in a battery.

And indeed, if, as in a steam locomotive, you use an open cycle steam engine to avoid the bulk of a condenser, you exhaust the working fluid and need to replenish that as well. So you need a water tank, as you had in the tender of a railway engine.

In principle any kind of external combustion (EC) engine could do what you propose. There is no magic about steam as a working fluid in this respect. In fact something like the Stirling engine would probably be more compact and just as efficient. The big snag, it seems to me, about an EC engine burning biomass for transport, is that the combustion can't be turned on and off in accordance with the variations of power demand. So you will intrinsically waste a huge amount of energy by keeping the heat source burning all the time, even though you only use the full heat output sporadically. When you add in the exhaust control measures needed to prevent pollution from straw burning, not to mention the inconvenience of needing to store five times the volume of fuel, and the need for getting rid of considerable amounts of solid ash at intervals, it becomes fairly plain why this idea is not going to fly. EC heat engines make a lot more sense in fixed installations such as power plants, where these issues can be managed without the overriding need to keep everything compact and lightweight, and where energy demand from the system is fairly constant rather than intermittent.

Generally not, I would have thought. The technologies involved are so different. But I seem to recall reading there are therapies that can "mark" a tissue for destruction, by an agent that is introduced subsequently and which acts selectively on the tissue that has been marked. This could be considered, superficially at least, a bit like the illumination of a military target by a laser. Maybe someone with medical knowledge can comment on whether my recollection has any basis in fact.

Search me. But he did. There are some things that have made it into Christianity that come from St Paul and are mentioned nowhere in the gospels. A classic example is the Christian disapproval of anything to do with sex.

I have, once, on foot, been invited to cross ahead of a car turning into a side road, when I stopped to let it go by. I was a bit surprised but then remembered this change. I doubt it will make much difference, especially since there seems to have been zero by way of a campaign to alert anyone to the changes. The trouble with these rules is that they will be observed fastidiously by the sort of person who is any case a careful road user. Yer average white van man, i.e. the sort of person actually likely to knock you over, won't give a toss, just as he never has in the past. It's a bit like voluntary covid mask-wearing: the people likely to be infectious won't be the ones who will bother with a mask.

Didn't stop him making up stuff Jesus never said, though, did it?

Who determined that?

This site may give you some ideas to verify for yourself (I don't vouch for the reliability of the site): https://treehozz.com/are-marine-invertebrates-osmoconformers I would guess that a salmon will be a euryhaline osmoregulator, since it migrates from salt to fresh water without any trouble, while many other fish will be stenohaline since they can't do that. As for a stenohaline osmoconformer, what about a sea anemone or jellyfish? But since these are terms that I have only learnt the meaning of as a result of your query, (ten minutes ago), do not treat me as an authority!

So if Jesus is the only teacher, why do Christians quote the Epistles of Ss Peter and Paul as well, as if they also have authority?

Thanks, I'm feeling a bit better already. By all means come back here if you are still stuck.

Gluconic acid is a bidentate ligand for Fe II as well, though. Gluconate seems to have the highest 1st pKa. Not sure if that's relevant.

As I read it, this paper does not challenge the primacy of photosynthesis in generating free oxygen. What it suggests is that the suddenness of the 2 oxygenation events can perhaps be explained by a positive feedback effect by which, once partial oxidation enzymes evolved, binding to marine sediments of partially oxidised metabolic byproducts would accelerate the rate of burial of organic matter. This would reduce the competition among the various oxygen-consuming processes, encouraging more free oxygen. And the more of that there was, the more organic matter would be partially oxidised and so the more efficient that burial process would be, and so on. Until there was so much partially oxidised material (i.e. so much chemical detritus from life processes) that, even though a lot of it was bound to minerals it nevertheless could take up enough oxygen for a balance to be reached, but at a far higher free O2 level than before. Or something like that - I have only skimmed it. (By the way, Rubisco always makes me think of Shredded Wheat................😁)

Well I don't know the answer to this offhand, so perhaps we can work it out between us. Can you do the first part?

Are you a science teacher, then? It seems rather unlikely.

Indeed. What always impresses me about these things is how one sets about getting any sort of handle on events that long ago, that involve life.

Well this is off-topic of course, but I do know "Voltex" is a well-worn scam, exploiting ignorance about power factors and wattless current. I suspect "Voltax" is the same schtick. Websites seem to have little control over whose ads pop up. I complained about Voltex ads on another science forum and the admin told me they had no way to stop them. So I wouldn't blame the website, except insofar as it accepts ads in the first place.

I had to go to the paper itself to find out what these POOM species are: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28996-0 Seems, as I suspected, they are organic compounds with hydroxyl and carboxylic acid groups on them. These will be polar and presumably able to bond to silicates by H-bonding. The interesting thing is that the paper associates the oxygenation event* with evolution of the enzymes that catalyse such partial oxidation, suggesting it was this evolutionary step that led to it. *I'm pleased the article called it the Great Oxygenation Event rather than the alternative Great Oxidation Event. I always find the latter misleading, as it was really, from the planet's point of view, a reduction event, leading as it did to free oxygen everywhere!

Thanks for the good wishes. It's just a runny nose, really. (But then I have had 3 doses of vaccine, plus an encounter with the original virus in March 2020.)

Yes 1 litre has a mass of 1kg, right? Which means 1000 grammes. So 1 g of anything dissolved in 1 l must be 1 part in one thousand i.e. 1ppt. So now you can do the first bit, can't you? Next, the molecular weight, or molar mass, is the mass of 1 mole of substance. So in the case of NaCL, if you have 58.44g of it, you have 1 mole. So how many moles, or rather, how much of a mole, would there be in 14.61g? P.S. it is now 22:22 in London and I am going to bed because I've got covid and want to get plenty of sleep (I'm fully vaccinated so it's just a nuisance). If you still need help in the morning I'll have a look after breakfast. I remember my son used to get in a flap with things like this. He could do them perfectly well really, but he used to panic. The thing to do is think calmly about each piece separately, and take it in steps.

OK this really a chemistry problem, rather than a maths problem. There are 3 things here. Let's take the easy one first. What do you think parts per thousand means and how would you set about calculating it? For the second, you need to know the molar mass (in the old days called the "molecular weight") of NaCl. How do you find that out and what is it? And then we can come back to the third.

Some were, certainly, in their own way. But none of them did, or do, the things I described, which are routine in science-based medicine. I have been trying to answer the question posed in the OP, as to why such traditional medicine has become used less in modern times.

What you say may be true but in the end the key distinction is that what you call "western" medicine is science-based. That involves not only verifying by controlled trials the effectiveness of a therapy, but also the other things I mentioned, do to with identifying the active agent, optimising the dose, checking safety and so forth, so that you understand as fully as possible what you are doing to the patient when you use it and you do so to the best possible advantage. Your traditional medicine man does little of this. He is not, after all, a scientist. He may not know why what he does works - or perhaps not even whether it works at all. Open-minded science will take note of what is said to work and will investigate to see what can be learned from it.

Jörk? 😄

Both can easily be the case. Obviously.