I couldn’t resist posting a link to this article on a colloidal thruster system I ran into whilst Googling various topics on the web. Oh! What a fortunate fellow am I.
What common desktop device does it remind you of?
Beyond the horrific reality of the dead and injured in Mumbai from last weeks terrorist attack is the uncertainty of ramped up state tensions between nuclear India and nuclear Pakistan. Pakistani’s weary of home grown terrorists and foreign instigators can sympathize with the fear and revulsion felt by Indians who are stunned by the event. But citizens of Pakistan are indignant about accusations of state involvement in the attack.
Given the weakened condition of the government in Pakistan and the sensitivity from chronic conflict with India, it is hard to draft a rationale describing what benefit the government of Pakistan might have in such dirty dealings.
We must trust that India can take a lesson from US experience with the attack-retribution reflex and find a way to prosecute those who planned this savage crime through police work rather than invasion across borders.
The reality of melamine in animal feeds and milk products has crossed the ocean and landed on the shores of North America. Trace levels of melamine have been detected in certain baby formula products in the US.
The National Milk Providers Federation (NMPF) has responded with a statement on their position on adulterants. Having been in the milk processing business as a quality control chemist, I can add that my experience with the industry is consistant with the statement by the NMPF.
To understand the true level of confusion and diverse practices relating to this problem, it is important to note that the analytical methods used by US milk processors are insensitive to the presence of melamine itself. Here is why: Raw milk arriving to a processing facility is tested for the presence of antibiotics, fat content, flavor, pH, and total solids. To my knowledge, there is no batch QC protein analysis anywhere in the US manufacturing flow. In Asia, apparently protein analysis is common.
The practical consequence of this analytical protein blindness in the US is that there is no benefit to adding melamine to milk because pricing is not determined by protein content. Milk is sold by the pound and its premium value is determined by the butterfat content.
Milk has been subject to many kinds of fraudulent modifications in the past. Sour milk has been neutralized with caustic. Today all milk is taste-tested for off flavor. Milk has been diluted for higher profit. Today all raw milk is tested for % solids and % fat to detect dilution. It should be above a certain minimum on both accounts. Cows have been milked abusively into chronic mastitis and given antibiotics. All milk is now tested for antibiotic residues via chemical and microbial assays. Finally, milk that contains an excessive microbial loading is rejected.
If Chinese milk processors adopted a similar testing protocol, the benefit of direct adulteration of milk with melamine would disappear. The effects of melamine-laced cattle feed is another issue. I have not heard of studies that connect ingestion of melamine contaminated feedstocks to milk contamination. Perhaps this has already been done.
According to the Wall Street Journal–
Dr. [Stephen] Sundlof said the melamine traces stemmed from the products coming in contact with the chemical during processing. The FDA approved melamine as a “food contact substance” about four decades ago.
The article continues-
The FDA said last month that it’s safe for consumers to eat most food with melamine below 2.5 parts per million, but infant formula was the exception. “FDA is currently unable to establish any level of melamine and melamine-related compounds in infant formula that does not raise public health concerns,” it said.
I am heartened to see that the FDA is reluctant to establish a threshold for safe consumption by infants. But at the same time, the matter of a 2.5 ppm threshold for everyone else amounts to a sh*t sandwich for the public.
The levels detected by US companies and agencies seems rather low. Again, from WSJ-
A spokesman for Mead Johnson Nutritionals, owned by Bristol-Myers, said the company’s own tests haven’t turned up any melamine, and the FDA tests turned up melamine levels “lower than the 0.25 parts per million limit that can be measured by the published FDA test method.” Mead Johnson, he said, maintains “stringent standards at all our manufacturing sites to ensure the high quality and safety of our products that our customers have come to expect.”
Dr. Sundloff said the melamine detected was tiny. Out of 87 samples, it found one sample with 0.137 parts per million and 0.140 parts per million on a verification test.
While toxicological threat to US consumers at the sub-ppm level is unclear at the moment, what seems to be lacking at FDA is a discussion as to the need to allow any level of melamine in any consumable.
Here is what is clear to Th’ Gaussling:
There is no overlap in the material streams of melamine or melamine resin manufacture with any dairy product. No dairy operation should reasonably expect to require containers of melamine monomer in its warehouse, nor should any supplier to dairy product manufacture.
Melamine contamination by contact exposure to melamine resin components can be averted by the use of many other food grade materials of construction, i.e., stainless steel.
If melamine is detected in food articles, it is the duty of the manufacturer to promptly audit all suppliers and eliminate the source of contamination.
Rather than tolerate and regulate the presence of a material whose only purpose is to perpetrate fraud, the FDA should ban food products containing detectable amounts of melamine. If the FDA goes forward with acceptable levels of melamine in dairy products, suppliers would begin to game the system. In a short time, ppm levels of melamine will be considered “normal” and suppliers of melamine contaminated feedstocks will be legitimized up to the regulatory threshold.
A firm stand by regulatory agencies will strengthen the motivation of manufacturers to maintain strong audit trails and take away the financial incentive to use this fraudulent additive.
Thanks to Les for this video.
I have been making a conscious effort to find ways to use borohydride compounds rather than just default to the mighty gray sledge hammer- LAH. There are numerous reports of diverse and wonderful means of activating borohydride to reduce the more refractory functional groups. Recently I prepared and used Zn(BH4)2 on a new substrate. Initially, it appears to work poorly. The grey wall cake seems to contain metallic zinc. If preferences mattered, I’d prefer see electrons reducing my substrate rather than Zn (II) to Zn.
You can’t always get what you want. M. Jagger
We may be entering a time of greater economic hardship than many have known in their lives. The great age of mass consumption, non-returnables, and disposable goods may have peaked. Boarding the Hummer or the Escalade to drive 5 miles to buy cigarettes and a Big Gulp may be a thing of the past for a greater number of citizens. Americans will have to adopt a lifestyle much more akin to Europe or Japan- reduced living space and reduced (kg of crap)/(person year), reduced portion sizes, more walking, local shopping, and increased use of rail transportation.
The Oil Shock of Summer 2008 snagged the suspenders of this nation of hydrocarbon addicts, sending us reeling into the election/market crash machinery like a drunken farmer pulled into the thresher. Out the back end of this nightmare comes the bloody oat chaff to hint that something horrific happened. Reality strikes, then … silence.
In spite of the plurality of media outlet channels into our collective consciousness, few infotainers are drilling into the core of the problem. The pace and timing of commercial media sets the rhythm of infotainment metered to the masses. Photogenic talking heads selected for their appeal read predigested content for broadcast to attention deficit channel surfers. People dulled by the sheer magnitude of content-dilute information streams and dazzled by the production value of infotainment are compelled to switch on HBO and hide from the world.
Here is what we must do. We must see to it that better questions are being investigated. Instead of asking about the replacement for gasoline, we must ask for a frank disclosure on the sustainability of high consumption. Instead of asking for better or hybrid automobiles, we must frame questions around the concept of a mass transportation network. How can we get intercity rail up and running? How can the Detroit automobile manufactures be cajoled into entering the rail infrastructure business? Where is the hydrogen going to come from to fuel the hydrogen economy? Does it make sense to consume energy to generate hydrogen and then turn around and burn it for propulsion?
The best answers come from the best questions.
For anyone outside of academia who has not actually received an invoice from Chemical Abstracts for literature retrieval services, let me assure you that literature searches will cost you real money.
CAS has weighted the basic search operations and defined them in a menu of task equivalents. When you subscribe, you purchase a bundle of tasks. Tasks can be used like a chit- they can be applied for a variety of search operations. Some search operations are assigned a higher value than others. Obviously, a group of big wheels at CAS sat down in a room and hammered out what they perceive the value of a given operation to be.
At this point, it is useful to remind folks that price is not properly based on cost, it is based on what the customer is willing to pay. CAS has an army of clerks punching abstracts into the database, so they do have some real overhead. While CAS honchos are mindful of paying the overhead, they are also trying to find a pricepoint for their information services. On this I do sympathize with them.
However, where I part ways with this organization relates to the monopolistic arrangement they have with information paid for by citizens of this country. The major pipelines of chemical research information seem to plumb directly into CAS and the ACS. Research that does not get published by the ACS goes to a variety of private publishing houses. The common thread is the transfer of copyright to the publishing house. By turning over the copyright of publically funded research to these organizations, the public relenquishes the right to free access to results it has paid for.
In a very real way, the published results of our university research complex represents national treasure. What do we do with it? We hand it over to publishing organizations who print it in exchange for the copyright. In this way, we can keep paying for access indefinitely.
In fact, lets highlight some of the features of this transfer of wealth and the cost to society of scientific literature-
Well, you say, the benefit is to society as a whole. The science we pay for goes into society where, like an incoming tide, lifts all boats.
Nonesense! This tide lifts the good ship Elsevier and the USS Chemical Abstracts. It helps large universities get larger. The generation of information has become a cash cow for a handful of organizations who are subject to precious little scrutiny by those who freely supply the scientific content that keeps the system going.
With all of the pious talk of the importance of the big 3 auto makers, it is hard to dissociate ones feelings with the subject. American car culture and our affinity for happy motoring is woven into the Stars and Stripes. But our automotive manufacturers have come to the end of the road. Their myopic practice of pure market-pull business operations, as opposed to the technology push of industrial leadership, has left them stranded on a slender spit of sand surrounded by the rising tide of change. The very immensity and gravitas that allowed these corporate creatures to dominate the market now threatens to sink them as our unsustainable mania for consumption and wretched excess comes to a squealing halt.
Three ailing patients show up in the congressional emergency room and plead for help. But the market and the government must do triage on this group of patients lying on cots before us and throw resources at those who may live and wheel the living dead to expire in the dark hallways of the corporate morgue.
The delegation of big wheels from Detroit were apparently unsuccesful in their reconnoiter to DC looking for national treasure. Their bizjet faux pas was the finishing dab of paint on this silly cartoon. It was a signature blunder marking arrogance and an artless attempt to exploit the transient alignment of stars motivating congress to fund business institutions “too large to fail”.
These business dinosaurs need to become extinct so as to allow other more competitive creatures a chance at survival. I urge the Congress to stand back and allow these companies to enter into Chapter 11 and reorganize. Their cost structures are simply too bloated with overhead to go forward. If a company is willing to reorganize, then it may be worth advancing a loan of public funds to aid their survival. But as they are presently configured, they should not be encouraged to live on to produce more of the same.
20 November, 2008. EIB Rhodium bullion prices continue to haunt the cold, murky pricing depths of the metals market. Today, Rhodium opened at US$1250/toz. That’s just 12 % of the June ’08 highpoint of US$10,100/toz.
Rhodium demand is heavily dependent on automotive and industrial catalyst applications. While chemical plants may still be chugging out hydroformylation products at reasonable levels, automobile manufacturers are having a hard time getting citizens to buy new automobiles. And strapped to the undercarriage of each automobile is a metal cannister packed with PGM-laced ceramic material. It is no coincidence that Rhodium prices and automotive sales have collapsed together.
Platinum pricing has fallen considerably as well, from the Feb ’08 high of US$2275/toz to todays opening price of US$780/toz. While Platinum does have considerable automotive and industrial catalyst application, it is also subject to demand from the global jewelry market, which acts to dampen the price collapse.
Two bits of Platinum news may be strengthening Pt prices. An incident at the Angloplats Polokwane smelter will lead to a shortfall in Pt output by an estimated 200,000 toz. Johnson Matthey predicted a 240,000 toz Pt shortfall for 2008. It was unclear whether that estimate takes into account the production stoppage at Polokwane. Matthey cited general safety stoppages and skilled labor shortages as being behind the anticipated Platinum shortfall.
Interested in building an astronomical observatory in your hometown? Have a look at Observatory 101. No pictures, but because I know the parties in the article, I can certify that there are excellent bits of advice for those keen on building a community observatory. Remember, square buildings are easier to construct than round buildings. It’s a rectilinear world.
What does it take to be in the upper few percentile in life? No, really. What does it take? See what Malcom Gladwell thinks about it. Plan to set aside 10,000 hours.
Tired of people incessantly humping your leg wanting this or that? Check out this USB accessory. If this is too much for your puritanical sensibilities, try the USB aroma therapy gadget and chill out. Check out ThinkGeek. Lots of cool stuff.
Are you torqued about the Lieberman situation? I know I am. So yell at somebody about it.
Quit whinin’ about yer pathetic cell phone coverage and get ta buildin’ yerself sumkinda antenna to boost the gal’ durn signal.
Blanchard sells gold coinage for those flush with cash. Load up on Krugerrands.
Need the straight dope on radioisotopes? Check out the list of monograph at the link.
Lamentations on Chemistry 