John Cuthber

Am I missing some profound point, or is stuff like this "When we start to retranslate the life science data, if one assumes the H is essentially on its own, trying to its lower it electrophilic potential, in a world of highly electronegative atoms, who will try to shift the burden back, we end up with life molecules maintaining electrophilic potential. " the sort of gibberish I normally only see in shampoo adverts ("Here's the science bit"). Stuff like this "Water is a poor conductor of electrons. The O is too electronegative. The way water conducts potential is through the potential in the H. " leaves me wondering if Pioneer knows anything about ionic conduction as opposed to electron bands. I mean, sure water is a poor conductor of electrons but, since hydrogen is too, it can't be down to electronegativity. At the other end of the scale; silver is one of the least electropositive metals but it's the best conductor. Oh, and by the way, lightning is driven by the sun. Plenty of power there without invoking new exciting theories based on very little.

That's not what usually happens where I'm from. Lactose is split into its 2 component monosaccarides and these are absorbed by the body and used as an energy source. Try lactulose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactulose

Can you supply any evidence for the claim that "This is due to the magnetic contributions having more of an impact than the charge"? As far as I'm aware the magnetic effects of H, H+ , Cl and Cl- can all generally be ignored. OK there's NMR spectroscopy but you need a magnetic feild that will just about pull your fillings out to get an energy difference that's markedly less than the typical thermal energy at room temperature. From the point of view of a positice test charge the H in HCl is at a higher electric potential than the Cl. From an equally arbitrarily chosen negative test charge's point of view the reverse is true.

I think the problem is how do we know it's not, for example, NiCl3. That's not a trivial question so I don't think you are being stupid. The old answer was to make lots of compounds like chlorides, sulphates, oxides and whatever then analyse them to see how much of each component there was in each compound then try to work out how they could agree with each-other and with things like how much they depressed the freezing point of water when you made solutions of them and which ones crystalised in the same shapes. The current way is just to learn the valencies of the elements. This "if Ni has to 2 electrons to give away, it`ll need to Chlorines two accept them, one each." is a question rather than an answer. Why 2? why not 1 or 3? The answer is to do with things like lattice energy and ionisation potential.

You might want to dilute the solution first. IIRC silver fluoride is soluble so titration with AgNO3 might work for HCl. Not sure if sulphate would interfere. You could try to ppt it with Ba(NO3)2 first but I think BaF2 is insoluble so that migt be tricky. The best way if you have access to the right equipment is to neutralise the stuff and measure the ions chromatographically. That way you don't need to drive off the HF as the vapour (and that's not a nice experiment btw). I think there's probably a way to do this by precipitations and or titrations on the stuff without making the nasty fumes. A titration against standard alkali will get the total acidity (and the H2SO4 concn if you are careful and lucky, the bisulphate ion should be distinguishable from the other acids if you use a pH meter while you titrate.) I think that MgF2 could be precipitated by adding MgNO3 and this could be filtered washed dried and weighed to give the HF concn. Then you could add Ba(NO3)2 to ppt BaSO4 to measure the H2SO4. Finally you could measure HCl by difference or by titrating with AgNO3. Good luck, and be careful with the HF.

In order to secrete water and sebum.

Hang on. Have a look at the part of the original post that I described as bollocks. This bit "Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AEC) have found evidence that certain fungi possess another talent beyond their ability to decompose matter: the capacity to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring their growth. " So I went on to point out that, "Firstly there is no evidence to support the idea that nuclear radiation is being used by the fungus as an energy source. This is a problem since that's what they are claiming. " and I get told "No, what they actually claimed was "Melanized fungal cells manifested increased growth relative to non-melanized cells after exposure to ionizing radiation, raising intriguing questions about a potential role for melanin in energy capture and utilization." What I should have said was that there was no plausible mechanism proposed. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The plosone article says nothing about catalysis. It does say "Irradiated melanin manifested a 4-fold increase in its capacity to reduce NADH relative to non-irradiated melanin" which might just mean that radiation damaged melanin is more reactive. Big deal.

Just as soon as you define what you mean by potential we might be able to answer the original question. "The H end needs to go outside the original molecule's electrons to lower its potential." doesn't seem to me to mean anything. OTOH Sayonara's point is valid enough that defining what you mean by potential may not contribute greatly to the world of chemistry.

What would you expect to get by treating a primary alcohol, for example ethanol , with KMnO4 in acid?

No, it wont. You can get things to float stationary in mid air but you need strong magnets and strongly diamagnetic materials like graphite, bismuth or superconductors. You can also use the gyroscope effect to stabilise a system. As has been said, a lot of the commercial "toy" versions are based on this principle. What you cannot do is have a stationary system without diamagnetism that floats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnshaw's_theorem

Firstly there is no evidence to support the idea that nuclear radiation is being used by the fungus as an energy source. This is a problem since that's what they are claiming. Secondly the production of melanin by fungi (and people ) is a defense mechanism against radiation. Not only by directly absorbing the radiation befor it hits anything important (as in the case of a suntan) but also by acting as a free radical trap (which explains the ESR spectum). All they have shown is that having melanin present is beneficial if you are in a high radiation environement and that's not news because thats exactly why organisms make melanin. Or, to sumarise, total bollocks.

Define what you mean by "potential". It doesn't seem to be any of the normal uses of the word.

Total bolocks.

A lot of lawn weedkillers are based on hormones. I'm sure that some of them are on sale to the public here in the UK. They certainly used to be. I don't know about sales in the US or planaria. Search for products containing 2,4D

Just a thought. If you are going to set yourselves up as the educated and informed voice of reason you might want to use capital letters.

"and this relates to Nitrogen... How?" It doesn't; that was the point. The question is so absurdly vague it doesn't even ask about nitrogen.

"Evidence-based government in the US We used to have it" When? I mean not just the US when did anyone have this? A major part of a government's job is economics and I think the evidence there is often poor. At best it's often a toss up between believing the left wing expert or the right wing expert.

OK, so say I email in and claim to be a physics professor. How do you check my credentials? Actually I'm a professional chemist but I don't think my employer would be happy to be used as a reference for this sort of thing (which is essentially why I don't use my real name.)

Imagine I got a hammer that weighed about as much as a person , say 140 pounds, and I lifted it 2 storeys up then dropped it on someone's head. It's not surprising the guy died. (and I'm not sure a cycle helmet would have saved him)

This may help http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henderson-Hasselbalch_equation So might the fact that one of the pKa s isn't important here.

It's currently about 22 minutes past 7 in the evening as I write this. While that is a fact it's probably not one that you were looking for. Perhaps you could have been more specific.

What a revelation!

Probably any of them but you won't be able to get it back. Anyway, if you need to ask questions like that you probably shouldn't be using HF.

I can't wait for someone to get this system up and running on a commercial basis. I will explain to my neighbour that it's a really great idea and that he really needs to get it installed. Then I will steal his electricity. Or, to put it another way, I forsee a problem with this technology. "Transistor radios were powered by RF exclusively (in the days before widespread distribution of batteries) and represented the first practical portable radios aimed at your average consumer, in the early 20th century" Sure about that?

I can't help thinking that the real benefit will come once we get everyone else to sign up to some sort of ethical code. Why pick on scientists? As far as I know we are not particularly unethical to start with. A code of ethics for politicians would achieve far more.