exchemist

Encourage the secession of Maryland, you mean?

American, too, though with dual US/Peruvian citizenship. But for another thread.......

Oh I see. Well that is good news certainly. Li extraction is very messy and largely in the hands of China. Do we know what they use as cathode and as electrolyte? The fire issue with Li+ seems to be the use of an inflammable electrolyte and also that oxygen can be released from some components in a fire, making it impossible to smother.

You and I had a brief exchange on this 2 years ago, here: https://scienceforums.net/topic/131641-the-sodium-battery-taking-off-any-expert-opinions-please/#comment-1239819 In which I summarised the principle of operation and challenges for the Na battery, at least as I understood them from quickly reading it up. From your post it isn’t clear what has now changed. It looks like just marketing blurb with nothing about the science. Is there more?

Why not try it then and see how it goes? Doesn't seem too risky to me. I'm actually now intrigued by what partial vapour pressure of water is generated by a 50:50 mixture (presumably by weight) with these hygroscopic glycols. I imagine there will be a -ve deviation from Raoult's Law, i.e. it will be lower than expected on the basis of the mole fractions present. It's just not something I've ever thought about before. In fact there could be something of a catch here. The molecular weight of your dipropylene glycol will be approx double that of simple propylene glycol. So a 50:50 mixture by weight, or by volume, will have about half the number of molecules of the glycol and more water in proportion. So you may find the humidity is higher with the di glycol than with the recommended mono version. But I have no idea how sensitive cigars are to all this. On that, you are the expert, not me.

Yes it sounds like a garbled description of the principle of the lever. But like you, I'm wondering whether this is just a wind-up. Let's see if the poster returns to explain.

All I know about this comes from this Wiki article which I have just read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humidor I note this claims that a 50:50 mixture of water and propylene glycol is recommended due to the buffering effect on humidity. Having looked it up, it appears propylene glycol is hygroscopic. This presumably means that if the humidity is high a suitably concentrated mixture of propylene glycol and water can actually pull excess humidity out of the air, hence the buffering effect. The same appears to be true of dipropylene glycol, but I can't find anything that compares the relative degree of hygroscopic behaviour of the two. So it looks to me as if both can work but you would be taking a bit of a chance, in that you would not know at what level of relative humidity dipropylene glycol would buffer the system. Both appear to be non-toxic and odourless, so not problematic from that point of view.

Love it!! 🤣

A-Holiness, surely? 😁

Pfft.

Yep, that's why I always read these posts by newcomers. You never know what bit of extra knowledge you may glean. Even from cranks like Tom Booth! But this looks like a serious enquiry. I had always found SN1 vs. SN2 one of the most boring and hackneyed topics in organic chemistry. Now, 50 years on, I find a new source of interest in it.

Buen dia. Guessing a bit, as I don't speak Spanish but have some French and Latin, the SN1 mechanism is favoured with tertiary carbon atoms because the substituents hinder access by a displacing anion, as it needs to approach from the side opposite to the group to be displaced. So SN2 doesn't work. Details here (using hydroxide as the displacing species and bromine as the species to be displaced : https://www.chemguide.co.uk/mechanisms/nucsub/hydroxidett.html It is also true that tertiary carbocations are somewhat more stable than primary ones: https://www.chemguide.co.uk/mechanisms/eladd/carbonium.html This is actually quite interesting. I was brought up with the "traditional" explanation that alkyl groups were mildly electron-donating, without any compelling explanation as to why this should be. The more modern hyperconjugation explanation described in this link is new to me, but makes sense of it quite elegantly. I hope you can read these explanation in English or, if not, that you can follow the diagrams. 🙂

Not enough for you to resurrect a 5 year old thread, just to dismiss it.

Look up rabies.

Yes of course a viral disease can kill you on its own. There are plenty of examples but perhaps the most dramatic is rabies.

Consult a physician.

..and was treated with appropriate respect by the monarch..... But in the Canada case there is aded, pointed constitutional significance, of course. Charles is actually King of Canada.

Useful additional background, thanks. A businessman? Surely the point about Carney is his previous experience as a central banker at times of economic crisis, rather than his dealmaking ability. Central bankers need to be good economists and people who keep a cool head and choose their words with care, to have impact without provoking unexpected reaction. (Exhibit A, Draghi: "And believe me, it will be enough", delivered with his reptilian stare.) They are also well-connected internationally, something Canada will benefit from as it tries to forge stronger trading links with other countries. Carney has got off on the right foot, it seems to me, by inviting the King to come and open Parliament. A pointed way to show everyone, Trump included, that Canada is not the USA and has its own identity and traditions. Since Trump, as a wannabe monarch, is impressed by the British Royal Family, this shot across his bows from the King may get through to him.

Look at this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/03/marco-rubio-germany-afd Rubio is way out of line here. The German constitution lays down criteria to prevent another Nazi party taking power - and the AfD has just triggered its provisions. He should stay the fuck out of European politics.

He met the AfD while over for the Munich security conference. And did NOT have the courtesy to call on the Chancellor. Foreign politicians just don’t do that sort of thing, especially when the country they visit has an election coming up. It’s interference all right, though obviously I wouldn’t claim it was in the same league as Putin’s sustained attempts to interfere. Very shocking, for the Vice President of what used, for 70 years, to be our strongest ally and firmest upholder of democracy.

Yeah but Musk and Tesla cars ("swasticars") are now a hate object across much of Europe. And from what I read, the AfD did not do as well as many people expected, so their intervention may have had a -ve impact - though it's hard to prove a counterfactual. Good point!

Vance and Musk most certainly have interfered, very overtly, in European politics. But I don’t know about Australia.

I don’t follow this. In humans, mate selection takes place before sexual activity. Women can’t shop around for who has the biggest todger. They only find out after they have made their choice. Don’t they?

A re-run of the Trump effect we have just seen in Canada. Quite a few right wing parties have made the error of copying Trump and, now that Trump has antagonised everybody in the democratic world, they are finding that was a huge strategic blunder. Trump is radioactive, politically. I expect rightwing populists like Farage, Meloni and Le Pen (or rather Bardella, now) will be trying discreetly to put as much distance as they can between themselves and Trump. 😉

I summarised the reasons early on in the thread, based on what the woman from the breast cancer charity told the BBC in the article cited by @studiot . It was to encourage as many women as possible to come forward and take up the offer of free screening for breast cancer, bearing in mind that some groups in society could be put off if they thought a man might be doing it. I was in fact interested to learn, reading about discussions about how to improve take-up of the covid vaccine in the pandemic, that certain groups with colonial heritage are markedly less trusting of the health service than those with long white British ancestry. This is not entirely irrational, as apparently some colonies were subjected to unethical medical trials in years gone by and the memory lingers. I had no idea. So anyway, there is a perennial challenge to get better participation from these groups. Using exclusively female radiographers for the programme seems to have been a way to overcome one potential barrier. Since well over half the radiographers are women anyway, this would not have been seen as something difficult to arrange.