Fun with Chemistry

How an HIV Miracle Drug Vanished
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I know a tiny bit about chemistry, but it always struct me as little bit like black magic - wave your hands like this, recite this incantation, dump some of this mystery compound in the pot and presto, it changes color, blows up, or best of all, begins spewing poison gas. Seems to me like you need a ton of knowledge to do anything useful, unlike mechanics where all you need is a couple of hand tools and you can build a house.

The YouTube blurb:

In 1998, a pharmaceutical company suddenly lost the ability to make their lifesaving HIV drug at one of its production facilities. Then that failure spread to the company’s analysis labs. Then it spread to the other production facility, and within months the lifesaving drug had effectively vanished from the entire planet.  And this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. How does a chemical just… disappear?

 

Taking the Cure

1895 Headache Treatment

Except for the apparent age of the image, this looks like a TikTok challenge.

Via Bustednuckles

Botox and Depression

From What If Botox Could Ease Both Wrinkles *and* Depression? by Tess Bonn

How does Botox help treat depression?

Specifically, the idea of utilizing botulinum toxin A to treat mental health disorders is primarily based on what’s known as the “facial feedback hypothesis,” which suggests that our emotional experiences are influenced by our facial expressions. For example, smiling typically makes us feel happier while frowning can make us feel more sad. 

The theory was first developed by evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin and the “father” of American psychology William James in the 19th century. While we typically use facial expressions to signal how we’re feeling to others, they can influence how we feel ourselves. In many cases, this self-reflection can reinforce negative thoughts and feelings. 

The article talks about some studies that show some positive results, but it's not a cure all.

 

The great porn experiment | Gary Wilson | TEDxGlasgow

Neurochemistry, addiction and high-speed internet porn. Explains a lot of stuff.

Show and Tell Tuesday

Implant Samples
Planks in the table top are six inches wide

IAman brought some samples of mechanical bits used to repair broken bones in people. I found the variety astounding. Of course, I'm used to dealing with ordinary nuts and bolts, not imaginary stuff from a different galaxy.

How Fauci Came to Power

Richard Fernandez explains in Single Point of Failure

Ashely Rindsberg explains in How Dick Cheney created Anthony Fauci

Basically, nobody was watching.

Links

• What Assange was indicted for. Good explanation of password cracking. Via Borepatch
• Berlin Wall Escape that was financed by an American News Agency. 1962. My Daily Kona
• How a Few Lucky Civil War Soldiers Started Glowing and Healed Faster. Bio-luminescent bacteria. Knuckle Draggin My Life Away

Lab Coats

L-R: “The Gross Clinic” by Thomas Eakin, 1875; “The Agnew Clinic” by Thomas Eakin, 1889.

Toward the end of the 19th century, Western medicine had an image problem. Joseph Lister’s ideas about antiseptics were spreading, and John Snow had made a breakthrough in mapping the spread of cholera. But to the public, most medical “cures” were little more than quackery and mysticism, and the appearance of a physician merely presaged a painful death.
At the same time, the reputation of science was in rapid ascendancy. The Industrial Revolution was transforming the towns and cities of Europe and America, and new breakthroughs were reported on a weekly basis in more than a thousand different scientific journals.
So the medical establishment did a costume change. Doctors dropped their traditional black coats, which were worn either as a mark of formality (like a tuxedo) or to symbolize the solemnity of their profession, and instead opted for white coats like the ones worn by scientists in their laboratories. The shift can be seen clearly in two different paintings by Thomas Eakins of operating theaters in the United States, separated by just 14 years. - Why the White Lab Coat Changed Medical History

This Video Will Hurt (Not)

Remember how I was asking how crazy can be contagious? Serendipity strikes again with this video. Some of the stuff in here makes me think I might not be far off in thinking that our brains our quantum state receivers. As for hypersound giving you a headache: that part is true, at least if you are willing to call ultrasound hypersound. Problem here is that no audio equipment will produce ultrasonic signals nor will loudspeakers produce ultrasonic sounds. If you think there might be some pieces of audio equipment somewhere that would, well, I would fall back on the definition of audio: sound that can be heard by the human ear. If it is producing sound waves at frequencies above 20 KHz (Kilo-Hertz, or thousands of cycles per second), then it is more properly called ultrasound equipment, and not audio. In any case, the audio channel on YouTube doesn't have enough bandwidth to carry ultrasound signals, and I seriously doubt whether the speakers you are using to listen to this YouTube video would be able to produce any ultrasound even if such a signal made it down the wire to them. My friend Jack was working with an ultrasonic distance measuring device one time. Thinking that what they couldn't hear wouldn't hurt them they left it turned of for a couple of hours and were rewarded with serious headaches. Oh, you think that ultrasonic speaker might be causing that problem? Well, yes it was. After that they only turned it on for the occasional millisecond long pulse, and they didn't have any more problems with headaches. Creator's web page with sources.

Psychiatric Hospital

For Plush Toys

Update September 2015 replaced missing picture.