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John Cuthber

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Posts posted by John Cuthber

  1. "It is, so to speak, a beam of light, frictionless, devoid of inertia. "

    The "so to speak" bit is important there, it means "not really".

    Anyway, electrons are lighter than ions so, for a given voltage and size, electrons are quicker.

  2. You have a valid point. During surgery, anti-septic is a must because most foreign microbes will cause a deadly inflammation response if they enter the bloodstream. The mast cells react to the foriegn body causing brain-damaging fevers and blood clots that can lead to stroke/heart-attack.

     

    Hence, the blood must remain sterile at all costs.

     

    However, most bacteria on the skin/mucous membranes is a good thing.


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    There is research that show anti-biotics to be toxic to us.

     

    http://www.answers.com/topic/antibiotics-side-effects


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    That's most likely caused by a virus, not bacterium.

     

    Still wrong.

    If I cut my finger or snag it on a rose thorn I end up with a hole in my skin just the same as if I have surgery.

    Bacteria will get in but (unlike your idea) most of them will do no harm. Most bacteria don't do very well at 36C, fairly high oxygen saturation and slightly alkaline conditions. To those that can't cope with such conditions, my blood might as well be bleach.

    Even those that can survive will usually soon be mopped up my my immune system.

    Lets be clear about this. Most bacteria (which are foreign by definition- I wan't born with them) are harmless.

     

    If a lot of bacteria which happen to be well adapted to causing infection get introduced into a cut (and they have no way to know, or care, if it's surgery or an accident) then, if my immune system doesn't destroy them quicker than they can multiply I get an infection.

    It's likely to be localised but it may get into the bloodstream.

    If it does it might damage the heart (though there's plenty of other ways it could kill me).

     

     

    The reason for swabbing skin before surgery is to reduce the number of bugs in order to make life easier for the immune system.

    People survived surgery before there were any antiseptics.

     

    I really don't understand yourpoint of view. Sometimes you say that all bacteria are our friends but at other times you say they should all be though of as deadly.

     

    Unsurprisingly, the truth is somewhere in between.

     

    Also, if you had looked at the Wiki article (and I know Wiki isn't God- it can be wrong; but I really think it's correct in this case) you would have seen that the black death was caused by a bacterium. It's even named on the wiki page as good old y pestis.

    So either explain why you didn't read it or explain why you said "That's most likely caused by a virus, not bacterium."

     

    While you are checking out that page on Wiki you might as well check this one

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus#Contributions_to_toxicology

    In particular read the bit that says "All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous." and see if you can understand how it relates to the issue of the toxicity of antibiotics.

  3. "No offense but anti-bacterials are bad."

    No offense, but sweeping generalisations are bad.*

     

    There are clearly cases where dropping the net number of bugs on the skin is a good idea. What would your opinion be of a surgeon who didn't swab the skin before he cut into it?

    Also if you think that you have, for example, just covered your hands with the flu virus, a disinfectant is a fairly good idea.

     

    * I'm English; I understand irony.

  4. I'm bored because you people are boring.

     

    That must be faulty logic.

    Either we are boring or we are not. If we are not then you can't blame your boredom on our non existent boringness.

    If we are then it still doesn't help you any. Someone somewhere in the world isn't bored, so our being boring does not always cause boredom in others.

    If you are bored it's your problem; don't try to blame us for it.

  5. NO doubt there are lots of factors but I read somewher that it improves the sense of smell. Partly because olfaction seems to "get tired"; after a while you stop noticing a smell I guess if you change nostrils the newly exposed on can detect the odour again.

    There’s another aspect to it. I can’t remember the details but it was something like the ability to distinguish molecules that don’t bind well to the receptors, but when they do they give a large signal from molecules that bind well but which don’t give as big a signal.

    One nostril gets a biger dose than the other and it sees the lots of molecules even though, individually they don't give a strong signal. The other nostil sees a smaller dose so it only sees the molecules that give a strong signal.

  6. You can add the HCl slowly with a dropping pipette and weigh the solution added. As much accuracy as your balance can give you, but a pain in the neck to do.

     

    A decent burette will let you measure to 1% easilly and 0.1% if you are careful and know what you are doing. I think it's a good investment.

  7. I think humans naturally factionalize

     

    There are two sorts of humans, those who factionalise...

     

    Seriously I think that, if it's not an inevitable human trait to "hang out with like minded people" it's a very strong one. People have certainly been know to do very odd things as a result of peer pressure.

  8. There are, according to wiki only about 15000 hippos left.

    Would chemists be more likely to get involved in their conservation if it were widely explained that the whole earth only holds about an attomole of hippos?

    What about the yoctomole levels of Pere David's deer etc?

  9. The temperature of an object is a measure of the energy it has on a microscopic scale.

    Water (in the liquid state) has enough energy distributed among it's molecules that, from time to time, they get split into ions.

     

    Incidentally, there are two things for which the phrase "zero point energy" gets used and they are both irrelevant in this case.

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