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Grundulum posted:It is indeed, as mentioned in the Wikipedia article. Also mentioned: The future of humanity is either radioactive dust or undifferentiated flesh
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Apr 17, 2018 09:07
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Chillbro Baggins posted:Huh, how about that. So the silicon double bond is that much stronger than carbon's? Silicons double bond To itself is weaker than the carbon equivalent - so we can get double bonded carbon compounds that are stable and give carbon a bunch of interesting Chemistry, but we can't do so for silicon anywhere nearly as easily. However, silicon double bonds To oxygen are much stronger than carbon equivalents - this is why glass is inert to pretty much everything, even some of the nasty stuff like RFNA can't break those Si=O bonds, and why sand melts before anything else interesting happens to it.
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Apr 17, 2018 11:17
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Silicons double bond To itself is weaker than the carbon equivalent - so we can get double bonded carbon compounds that are stable and give carbon a bunch of interesting Chemistry, but we can't do so for silicon anywhere nearly as easily. However, silicon double bonds To oxygen are much stronger than carbon equivalents - this is why glass is inert to pretty much everything, even some of the nasty stuff like RFNA can't break those Si=O bonds, and why sand melts before anything else interesting happens to it. Of course that's without fluorine coming in and wrecking up the place. Come to think of it... I've used HF to clean the glass off metallic silicon plenty of times. When it etches away all the SiO2, the solution goes "yeah I'm done" and buggers off. Actually the silicon just becomes hydrophobic but whatever. Mustached Demon has a new favorite as of 11:49 on Apr 17, 2018 |
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Apr 17, 2018 11:40
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EKDS5k posted:Scary prion chat: Fatal Insomnia This is nightmare fuel. If I knew I carried this I would get a vasectomy ipso facto. Life's tough enough, let's not pass genetic defects if we can avoid it. Adopt if you want the parent experience.
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Apr 17, 2018 12:54
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Question for the biochem people: with recent progress in protein folding, is it hypothetically possible to create a protein that would cause prions to unfold and fold back properly, or at least into an inert form?EKDS5k posted:Scary prion chat: Fatal Insomnia Why do I feel like it was Dr. Roiter making a questionably ethical decision rather than the patient actually becoming conscious and agreeing to this?
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Apr 17, 2018 15:38
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Arglebargle III posted:what unit is N? "Normality". The long and short of it: prions are loving hardy, will gently caress your poo poo up, and are nightmare fuel of the highest order.
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Apr 17, 2018 15:44
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re. prion chat: a couple years ago I had a chance to read DC Gajdusek’s journals/letters from the start of his stint in Papua New Guinea and some of the details were just amazing he had formerly worked for the Army during the Korean War, and kind of drifted around the globe immediately after his discharge, keeping in contact with his ex-boss by mail the whole time at one point he sent said boss a letter saying basically “um, so I’m out of money, can you help me out”. his boss went “...fine”. he ended up in PNG with a bunch of guys working on something totally different, and gradually got drawn into investigating the phenomenon later named as kuru, because he thought it was weird (he also mentioned off-hand having very young boys living with him during his post-Army period. later, he was accused of having molesting them :/ )
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Apr 17, 2018 15:44
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HawkHill posted:ApoE4 creates a version of the protein that leads to the plaques that are characteristic of Alzheimer's. . Okay, beta-amyloid plaques are characteristic of Alzheimers. The amyloid plaques come from a protein called amyloid precursor protein. An enzyme called beta-secretase can cleave this protein, leaving a fragment of it stuck to a cell. Then that fragment can be subsequently cleaved by another enzyme, gamma-secretase, which produces beta-amyloid, which can accumulate in the plaques seen in Alzheimers. ApoE generally acts to break down beta-amyloid, but the E4 variant is not as good at it as the others. And ApoE4 is the single biggest genetic risk factor for developing AD. But, there are big buts. First, some population groups have a high frequency of the E4 variant, but low levels of AD. Regardless of ApoE genotype, women are more likely to develop AD. Plenty of people who develop AD do not have the E4 variant, and plenty of people with the E4 variant (even homozygously) don't get AD. But even more significantly, the amyloid hypothesis might just be totally wrong. A vaccine was developed to immunise patients against beta-amyloid, and it was successful in entirely clearing the plaques from the brains of AD sufferers, but it didn't change the course of the disease. Granted, maybe that's a case of the damage already being done by the type plaques are seen, but more recently Merck did a large study of a drug which inhibits beta-secretase and stops generation of beta-amyloid in the first place, and terminated the trials during Phase 3 because it just didn't do anything to stop the disease. Earlier drugs that served to inhibit gamma-secretase were also abandoned because, in addition to their side effects, they also did nothing to stop the disease, and patients progressed to dementia at the same rate as those on placebo. We really don't know what causes Alzheimers.
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Apr 17, 2018 16:22
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To be clear, I never said that ApoE4 is the only factor associated with a high risk of Alzheimer's. The data that I've seen says that between 30-50 percent of people who test positive to ApoE4 do not develop Alzheimer's. I don't know how many of those people are E2/E4 or E3/E4. Do you happen to know? I agree that some populations have a relatively high rate of E4 and a relatively low rate of Alzheimer's. One suggestion I've seen is that these populations have a relatively low dietary intake of cholesterol. That's an interesting idea but I don't know how far you can take that. And I agree that there have been studies that seem to show that AopE4 is not a significant factor. OTHO, In vitro it seems to work, https://gladstone.org/about-us/news/scientists-fix-genetic-risk-factor-alzheimers quote:Treating human apoE4 neurons with a structure corrector eliminated the signs of Alzheimer’s disease, restored normal function to the cells, and improved cell survival. Huang is now working with his collaborators in academia and the pharmaceutical industry to improve the compounds so they can be tested in human patients in the future. HawkHill has a new favorite as of 17:01 on Apr 17, 2018 |
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Apr 17, 2018 16:52
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TerryLennox posted:This is nightmare fuel. If I knew I carried this I would get a vasectomy ipso facto. Life's tough enough, let's not pass genetic defects if we can avoid it. Adopt if you want the parent experience. I was told I have between a 1 in 40 and 1 in 200 chance of giving a kid Huntington's (and I may express symptoms in late life, hopefully past my 70's or so) so I got a vasectomy. Not worth the risk of passing poo poo along, and there are PLENTY of good kids that need adopting if I ever decide to have one.
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Apr 17, 2018 17:27
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there's also the type 3 diabetes theory for Alzheimers
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Apr 17, 2018 20:40
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Tunicate posted:there's also the type 3 diabetes theory for Alzheimers Sometimes it seems like unless you have tissue samples, Alzheimer's Disease is diagnosis by exclusion. The Type 3 diabetes hypothesis makes sense in terms of brain insulin/IGF deficiency and insulin/IGF resistance. I won't be surprised if it turns out that there are a number of different ways to muck things up. NAD+ and Sirtuins are the new hotness for many researches and the correlation there also seems strong.
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Apr 17, 2018 22:13
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Anyone happen to know about glycerol self association in liquid or aqueous solution?
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Apr 17, 2018 22:34
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HawkHill posted:Sometimes it seems like unless you have tissue samples, Alzheimer's Disease is diagnosis by exclusion. That’s the fun part of biochem: so many possibilities, and the pathways can get hilariously complex 
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Apr 18, 2018 13:42
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From the Healthcare Stories thread: Roki B posted:Had a patient who ate a bunch of castor beans, he dunked on himself with ricin poisoning. Poison control's advice was "LOL BYE". And the followup post about what ricin does: Wikipedia posted:
That's some scary poo poo.
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Apr 18, 2018 18:33
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Neurotoxins are the ones I hate to think about most. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (broad class, contains most nerve gasses) interfere with the very basic ability of a nerve to stop firing off and telling a muscle to contract. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that tells a muscle to contract, bridging the gap between nerve and muscle. When the nerve no longer sends the signal to contract, it releases the acetylcholinesterase to allow the muscle to relax. When that process is inhibited, the muscle continues contracting, which leads to everything firing off sooner or later. We used the acronym SLUDGE back in the army to describe the symptoms, those being Salivation, Lacrymation, Urination, Defecation, and Gastrointestinal distress, and Emesis. Nerve agents have a similar mechanism of action as the Tetanus toxin, but instead of getting 2-3 lovely weeks to live your last, you get 5-10 min of body-wide seizures as everything seizes up and you poo poo/piss/cry yourself to death. e: I’ve probably said it before in this thread, but I made a very big mistake in asking a chemical warfare officer about her job one day.
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Apr 18, 2018 18:48
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Life was an accident and proteins an even greater/potentially horrifying one. Even properly folded proteins look like angry little fucks. Not a surprise misfolded ones are such assholes really.
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Apr 18, 2018 19:02
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IMO neurotoxins are less scary than the protein-destroying compounds like ricin or amatoxins. At least if you get exposed to VX or something it is rapidly obvious that something is wrong, and because the primary way it kills you is respiratory paralysis, if you can get to an ambulance in time they can intubate you and keep you alive until the compound is degraded. Also, there are known antidotes. If you eat poisonous mushrooms? Sorry, no signs of toxicity until they're fully digested and your liver and kidneys have begun to irreversibly liquefy, and there is no available treatment beyond a transplant
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Apr 18, 2018 20:13
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Yeah atropine is pretty FOOFy itself, but it works like magic against nerve agents if you can get it into your system soon enough.
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Apr 18, 2018 22:22
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Yeah, those fun things are the reason I can never give blood again without lying on the form, since I lived in Italy from 1991-1993, which is square in the middle of a Likewise, except Germany during most of the 80s.
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Apr 18, 2018 22:59
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period when Mad Cow was running rampant in Europe.
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I think it’s pretty clear at this point the amyloid hypothesis is wrong. Alzheimer’s might not even be a single disease. But our understanding of it versus cancers or cardiovascular disease is very primitive.
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Apr 19, 2018 00:16
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rndmnmbr posted:Yeah atropine is pretty FOOFy itself, but it works like magic against nerve agents if you can get it into your system soon enough. It can also be pretty handy for treating ulcers, although, when mixed with phenobarbital and some other stuff (Donnatal), you discover that is because if you sit down for more than a second, you are unconscious again, which means less stress...
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Apr 19, 2018 05:11
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e: wrong thread
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Apr 19, 2018 05:17
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e: wrong thread
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Apr 19, 2018 05:18
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The bottle of phenolphthalein says it may cause birth defects bwahahahaha I dunno if it's just 4am but that's funny. Exposure may cause dizziness. Prolonged exposure may cause organ damage too. Mustached Demon has a new favorite as of 11:24 on Apr 19, 2018 |
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Apr 19, 2018 11:20
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Birth defects? Pff whatever, I’ve already been born
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Apr 19, 2018 11:29
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I'm looking for a chemical for a stupid art project. Not literally the chemical, but the name of one. I'm looking for something with an interesting molecular structure that is both explosive and highly mutagenic. The chemical model is going to get painted onto a lab coat. Any recommendations?
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Apr 20, 2018 00:19
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13Pandora13 posted:I'm looking for a chemical for a stupid art project. Not literally the chemical, but the name of one. I'm looking for something with an interesting molecular structure that is both explosive and highly mutagenic. The chemical model is going to get painted onto a lab coat. Any recommendations? Hydrazine? I don’t know what your bar is for “highly interesting” but anhydrous hydrazine sure meets the other two requirements. Alternately, tetryl fits the bill. Probably any explosive compound that’s aromatic would. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetryl
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Apr 20, 2018 00:26
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13Pandora13 posted:explosive and highly mutagenic Plutonium? 
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Apr 20, 2018 00:28
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13Pandora13 posted:I'm looking for a chemical for a stupid art project. Not literally the chemical, but the name of one. I'm looking for something with an interesting molecular structure that is both explosive and highly mutagenic. The chemical model is going to get painted onto a lab coat. Any recommendations?
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Apr 20, 2018 00:31
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cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, better known as RDX. 
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Apr 20, 2018 00:35
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RDX maybe? GDI Deteriorata
Kalman has a new favorite as of 01:06 on Apr 20, 2018 |
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Apr 20, 2018 00:37
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Uranium hexafloride?
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Apr 20, 2018 00:37
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Deteriorata posted:cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, better known as RDX. This is lovely, I think we have a winner. I like the TNT and Tetryl options too, thanks everyone!
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Apr 20, 2018 00:38
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Deteriorata posted:cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, better known as RDX. Huh, c-4 is 91% RDX.
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Apr 20, 2018 00:39
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Dang, I had no idea RDX's structure was so pretty.
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Apr 20, 2018 00:44
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Mustached Demon posted:The bottle of phenolphthalein says... Well yeah, that's a side effect of making GBS threads yourself inside-out. Edit: I showed my father the RDX molecule and explained that I know enough from Chem 101 to know that all the constiuent atoms really would prefer to be N2 and O2. He laughed, having used C4 professionally in the past. Is caffeine explosive? It seems to have the right ratio of N and O to make happy pairs. Another edit: my high school chem teacher was a former USN Nuc, and did the demo with holding a candle on a stick up to a patry balloon filled with He, and the one with H2. For the science fair that year, one student whose dad was a welder filled a big trash bag with a stoichiometric mix of O2 and acetylene. It cracked the glass backboard of the basketball goal it was tethered to the hoop of. Chillbro Baggins has a new favorite as of 01:35 on Apr 20, 2018 |
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Apr 20, 2018 01:03
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Chillbro Baggins posted:Well yeah, that's a side effect of making GBS threads yourself inside-out. one part  one part  at the end there.e: 
iospace has a new favorite as of 02:06 on Apr 20, 2018 |
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Apr 20, 2018 01:51
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Chillbro Baggins posted:Is caffeine explosive? It seems to have the right ratio of N and O to make happy pairs. (Un)fortunately, caffeine's nitrogens are arranged in a more stable purine configuration. List most organic compounds you can light it on fire, but it's not exactly an explosive.
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Apr 20, 2018 02:03
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Phanatic posted:Hydrazine? I don’t know what your bar is for “highly interesting” but anhydrous hydrazine sure meets the other two requirements. I love that the molecule says "no, no, no, no!"
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Apr 20, 2018 02:22
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