`There were many acid tests happening in the 1950s and 1960s. Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters dosed sometimes-unsuspecting proto-hippies. The CIA was dosing unsuspecting mainstreamers. Leary dosed fully cognizant artists, therapists and students. But meanwhile, over at Army Chemical Center at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, psychiatrist James S. Ketchum was testing LSD, BZ and other psychedelic and deliriant compounds on fully informed volunteers for the U.S. military. [..]
Now, Dr. Ketchum has released his fascinating self-published memoir, Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten, primarily detailing his times at Edgewood. The book boasts charts, graphs and experimental reports – a veritable goldmine of information for those who are interested in psychedelics, deliriants, or chemical warfare. It’s also a funny, observant, and reflective personal memoir, casting a light not only on Ketchum and his work, but on a decade that saw 60s counterculture and the military share an oddly intersecting obsession with mind-altering drugs.’
`We may have already encountered Martian life about 30 years ago and accidentally killed it, according to a new analysis of NASA’s Viking mission to Mars presented Sunday at a major astronomy conference in Seattle. [..]
Schulze-Makuch and Houtkooper suggest that the hydrogen peroxide detected by Viking could have come from killing Martian microbes that, like some peculiar creatures on Earth, use hydrogen peroxide the same way humans use water.
The Mars landers did all their chemical analyses by mixing samples with water — a step that would have prompted a powerful chemical reaction in any microbe full of hydrogen peroxide, killing it and releasing the peroxide.’
`Self-cleaning fabrics could revolutionize the sport apparel industry. The technology, created by scientists working for the U.S. Air Force, has already been used to create t-shirts and underwear that can be worn hygenically for weeks without washing.
The new technology attaches nanoparticles to clothing fibers using microwaves. Then, chemicals that can repel water, oil and bacteria are directly bound to the nanoparticles. These two elements combine to create a protective coating on the fibers of the material.
This coating both kills bacteria, and forces liquids to bead and run off.’
`A group of researchers claim that they are patenting a possible cure for cancer involving nothing more than sugar and short-chain fatty acid combination.
The Johns Hopkins researchers cautioned that their double-punch molecule, described in the December issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology, has not yet been tested on animals or humans. [..]
The researchers focused on a sugar called N-acetyl-D-mannosamine, or ManNAc, for short, and created a hybrid molecule by linking ManNAc with butyrate.
The hybrid easily penetrates a cell’s surface, then is split apart by enzymes inside the cell.’
`When deputies knocked, Herman Scott Swafford told them what they already smelled. McMinn County Sheriff’s Department records show deputies knocked on the door of an outbuilding, suspicious that someone might be making methamphetamine.
A report shows that Deputy Mike Patterson smelled a chemical odor and when he asked Swafford what was going on inside, Swafford said, “You know what’s going on, I’m cooking meth.”
A search that followed sent him to jail Sunday.’
Big free books, full of information that might be useful.
Not to might right at the moment, really. But I’m bored and I like getting parcels in the mail. π
Apparently if you put dry ice into some sort of alcoholic drink, when the carbon dioxide sublimes it pulls some ethanol along with it.
(7.0meg Windows media)
see it here »
This guy uses a laser printer to transfer a negative onto a piece of brass, then etches the brass in coper sulfate to give a cool reproduction of the image in the metal.
`Scientists say they have made the world’s strongest nanowire, reaching the theoretical limits of what they had designed. [..]
“The ultimate strength we report is the highest recorded for any semiconductor material system and is at the theoretically predicted limit,” says Sader, who was involved in measuring the strength of the wires using an atomic force microscope.
“This indicates that these nanowires are near perfect materials.” [..]
They then tested the strength by placing it across a small trench and manipulating it sideways. They found it could bend and stretch farther than any nanowire made previously, sustaining 15 gigapascals before snapping. If the wire were one centimetre in diameter it could hold up to 100 tonnes without breaking, Sader says.’
`”In Hitler’s Germany it was almost a capital offence to send gold out of the country. Since the names of the laureates were engraved on the medals, their discovery by the invading forces would have had very serious consequences,” explains the Nobel Foundation. Yet, when `the Nazis occupied Bohr’s Institute and searched it very carefully’ they found nothing. [..]
“While the invading forces marched in the streets of Copenhagen, I was busy dissolving von Laue’s and also Franck’s medals,” [Niels Bohr] wrote in `Adventures in Radioisotope Research’, published in 1962.
Dissolving the medals was not easy, he would recount. For, gold is “exceedingly unreactive and difficult to dissolve.” Thus, the solution was, literally, a solution. “The medals quietly waited out the war in a solution of aqua regia.” After the war, the gold was recovered from the solution and the Foundation presented von Laue and Frank with the `recoined’ Nobel medals.’
`A jury found a former lab assistant guilty Thursday of murdering his boss’s estranged husband by stuffing the man’s body in a barrel of acid.
James Fagone, 24, and biochemist Larissa Schuster, 46, were arrested after authorities found the decomposed body of Timothy Schuster in a storage unit that his estranged wife had rented in July 2003.
The body was stuffed into a 55-gallon container.
Fagone testified last week that the two had knocked Timothy Schuster out with chloroform and a stun gun, and that Larissa Schuster had poured gallons of hydrochloric acid over her husband.’
‘German sex educators plan to launch a spray-on condom tailor-made for all sizes.
Jan Vinzenz Krause from the Institute for Condom Consultancy, a Singen-based practice that offers advice on condom use, said the product aimed to help people enjoy better and safer sex lives.
“We’re trying to develop the perfect condom for men that’s suited to every size of penis,” he said. “We’re very serious.”
Krause’s team (spraykondom.de) is developing a type of spray can into which the man inserts his penis first. At the push of a button it is then coated in a rubber condom.’
There’s also a news video, showing people playing with condoms and dildos in a science lab, basically. π
see it here »
`We’ve all dreamed of it – who wouldn’t want to have bright blue urine? Alright, I admit some people might be appalled at this strange activity, but many will find it interesting.
No, you don’t have to contract Syphilis to get blue urine. The method presented here is quite harmless.
WARNING: This guide contains instructions to eat things which are not sold for human consumption. Make sure you know the risks and read all relevant MSDS sheets before trying this on yourself! Some people may be allergic to Methylene Blue dye.’
`For 40 years it has been torched, vandalized, had its legs cut off and even been run over by a car. But officials in the Swedish city of Gavle are guaranteeing that this year’s giant straw Christmas goat – the victim of Sweden’s most violent yule tradition – will survive unscathed.
The 43-foot-high goat – a centuries-old yule symbol that preceded Santa Claus as the bringer of gifts to Swedish homes – has been burned down 22 times since it was first set up in Gavle’s square on Dec. 3, 1966.
But for its 40th anniversary Sunday, officials think they have finally outsmarted the resourceful vandals by dousing the battered ram with flame-resistant chemicals normally used on airplanes.’
‘Back in the late 60’s this book, written for Children, was pulled from all public libraries and store shelves by the government. It was said that the experiments and information contained herein were too dangerous for the general public. [..]
This book is thoroughly interesting and is full of ideas and inspiration, it is the bible for any young chemist-in-training. Used copies on Amazon are rare and are currently priced between $237 and $690 for very used copies. However, because it was published in 1960, before the US copyright laws were rewritten, and because its original copyright was never renewed (yes, I checked myself), it’s legal for me to share with you online.’
This links to a 28.5meg, 114page PDF of the book. You can also see Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments at Amazon .. US$250.. Not cheap. π
`Scientists have combined two molecules that occur naturally in blood to engineer a molecular complex that uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, says research published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
This molecular complex can use energy from the sun to create hydrogen gas, providing an alternative to electrolysis, the method typically used to split water into its constituent parts. The breakthrough may pave the way for the development of novel ways of creating hydrogen gas for use as fuel in the future.
Professors Tsuchida and Komatsu from Waseda University, Japan, in collaboration with Imperial College London, synthesised a large molecular complex from albumin, a protein molecule that is found at high levels in blood serum, and porphyrin, a molecule which is used to carry oxygen around the body and gives blood its deep red colour. Porphyrin molecules are normally found combined with metals, and in their natural state in the blood they have an iron atom at their centre. The scientists modified the porphyrin molecule to swap the iron for a zinc atom in the middle, which completely changed the chemistry and characteristics of the molecule.’
`Mixing antimatter and matter usually has predictably violent consequences the two annihilate one another in a fierce burst of energy.
But physicists in Geneva have found a new way to make the two combine, at least briefly, into a single substance. This exceptionally unstable stuff, made of protons and antiprotons, is called protonium. [..]
Researchers led by Evandro Rizzini at Italy’s University of Brescia believe that some of the antiprotons reacted with ionised molecules of ordinary hydrogen, stealing away a proton. These proton-antiproton systems lasted microseconds at most, but that was long enough for many of them to drift away from the core of the experiment before exploding.’
`[..] Computational modeling of the THC-AChE interaction revealed that THC binds in the peripheral anionic site of AChE, the critical region involved in amyloidgenesis. Compared to currently approved drugs prescribed for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, THC is a considerably superior inhibitor of A aggregation, and this study provides a previously unrecognized molecular mechanism through which cannabinoid molecules may directly impact the progression of this debilitating disease.
[..] Therefore, AChE inhibitors such as THC and its analogues may provide an improved therapeutic for Alzheimer’s disease, augmenting acetylcholine levels by preventing neurotransmitter degradation and reducing A aggregation, thereby simultaneously treating both the symptoms and progression of Alzheimer’s disease.’
`Camille has beauty and brains.
She’s a former model and a Phi Beta Kappa with a master’s in education. There’s a part of her, though, that’s not so perfect.
She smells like spoiled fish.
Camille says when she taught, students wouldn’t come near her.
“They would say things like, ‘Ew, this classroom stinks like dead fish.’ They would call me ‘Miss Fishy.'”‘
`Recent reports of problem foods in Mainland China have raised global concerns about the safety of Chinese food products. Drawing on reliable data extracted from Chinese newspapers, magazines and the Internet, this report, the second in the series, takes a closer look at the hair-made soy sauce, a common kitchen-accessory for marinating and seasoning foods. It seeks to inform the scientific and medical communities regarding the potential short- and long-term epidemic consequences of consuming such soy sauce.’
This page has a bunch of information about quinine, as well as a fully little limerick:
`A mosquito was heard to complain
That a chemist had poisoned his brain
The cause of his sorrow
Was paradichloro
Diphenyltrichloroethane.’
`It looks like a giant cup of red wine or even blood.
Late last month villagers on Ambae, one of the chain of islands making up the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, made a startling discovery. The previously blue-green water in a three-kilometre-wide lake, perched at the top of a 1500-metre-high active volcano, had suddenly turned bright red.
“It’s quite red, like red wine,” said Esline Garaebiti, the geo-hazards manager for Vanuatu’s Department of Geology, Mines and Water Resources. But exactly why remains a mystery, she said, adding that water samples were being sent to Belgium and New Caledonia for analysis.’
aka How To Explode Bathtubs
(24.2meg avi)
see it here »
`A chemical used to make food wrapping and line tin cans could be the cause of surging prostate cancer rates in men, says a study.
Bisphenol A is widely used in the food industry to make polycarbonate drinks bottles and the resins used to line tin cans, even though it is known to leach into food and has long been suspected of disrupting human sex hormones.
The new research suggests the small but constant level of bisphenol A entering peoples diet has a particular impact on pregnant women, disastrously altering the development of unborn baby sons.
The chemical causes microscopic changes in the developing prostate gland but these are not apparent at birth. Instead, they show up years later when they lead to a range of prostate diseases, such as enlargement and cancer. The changes can also cause malformation of the urethra, the channel for urine.’
`You are deep underground in a lab that once housed some of the finest minds in chemistry. But robots directed by a crackbrained artificial intelligence have taken it over and plan to use its equipment to destroy the world! After freezing an evil robot with your handy wrist-mounted hot-and-cold gun, you reach the Haber-Bosch room. And now you must correctly synthesize ammonia or die.
“Your students are playing video games,” Gabriela Weaver told a group of chemistry teachers at the American Chemical Society meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, on 29 March. “They are playing them more and more hours a day. They are probably playing them in your class.”
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Weaver, an associate professor of chemistry at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, is building a computer game about the subject – she hopes her prototype will be as appealing to students as the blockbuster games coming out of companies like Electronic Arts (EA).’
`The United States CPSC has initiated criminal legal action against us and other chemical suppliers. In short, the CPSC would like to ban the public from all access to chemicals. This would mean an end to hobbies such as model rocketry, pyrotechnics and of course chemistry. One by one, our freedoms are slowly being taken away from us – this action must be stopped now.
Specifically, the CPSC is focusing on certain chemicals and metals at this time. [..]
This forbids or very severely limits sale of all common oxidizers and many common pyrotechnic fuels to anyone who does not hold a manufacturing license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF). To require everyone who wants to work with common chemicals to hold a BATF “Explosives Manufacturing License”… even though they are not manufacturing explosives, is completely insane.’
`Traces of a carcinogenic chemical have been found in soft drinks at eight times the level permitted in drinking water, it was revealed last night.
Tests conducted on 230 drinks on sale in Britain and France have identified high levels of benzene, a compound known to cause cancer, according to the Food Standards Agency. There is a legal limit of one part per billion of benzene in British drinking water. The latest tests revealed levels of up to eight parts per billion in some soft drinks.’
`Sometimes you will see entertainers on the streets who make little poodles out of balloons. Some street entertainers can create several figures but very often their repertoire is limited. Because of this shortage of many street entertainers’ possible sculptures you could think that this skill is difficult to learn. That is not true. Within a couple of minutes the skill of the ‘poodle knot’ can be learned. The knotting techniques for more complicated structures can be learned quickly: After a couple of days in which you practise knotting for about one hour, you are able to model complex structures. Modelling balloons can very well be employed to visualise complex chemical structures and could therefore be used by professors and lecturers at universities or teachers at schools for a better presentation and explanation.’
