Week Twelve - Cell Biology & TCM

What a question.

I know some people really want to keep TCM and western medicine separate (even at this school! hello, it's aImc), but I LOVE the integration. One of the reasons why I like my own acupuncturist so much is he has a background in Biomedicine and right away recommended ordering blood and hormone tests. That wouldn't resonate well with some, but it totally jives with me, and that's the type of practitioner I want to be when I grow up!

Western medicine doesn't shake my core and feel "right" like TCM does, but by the same token I am completely fascinated with it. I feel (fortunately or not) that in our society of skeptics, to gain credibility, we as practitioners will find it to our advantage the more well versed we are in western concepts and how TCM can be explained by such. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mean to sacrifice our lovely medicine to the western hands, always having to explain TCM in western terms, never the other way around, I know, I know we get the raw end of the stick with this one. Maybe I'll have a rude awakening when all my patients don't end up just like me, and don't appreciate this more integrative approach of mine.

Seeing the pictures of the cell structures, reminds me of how in TCM no small drop of sweat, sinew or organ goes unnoticed. Every piece of the puzzle is equally important for a full and proper diagnosis, and therefore road to harmony. An animal cell would NOT be an animal cell if it contained chloroplasts. Perhaps they are only one tiny part of a cell, but they are crucial! Perhaps it is "normal" for a patient to have a constant low pitched tinnitus; they just deal with it! But we clever students know better and this could be a huge clue in their diagnosis. Low back pain you say? Achey knees? Ah yes, the pieces fall into place...even the small ones.

Week Twelve - Website reviews

So I really appreciated the animated Krebs cycle site, except I only really recognized the little CO2 and water molecules floating away during the various stages. It was very helpful to look up pyruvate in wikipedia and get a little background since that is a base component of the cycle. It reminds me of stem cells in a way, in that pyruvate can go on to create carbohydrates, fatty acids, the amino acid alanine or ethanol depending on the process. It's like a blank slate!

I'm a sucker for a good list, so I love the side-by-side comparison of animal and plant cells! Also, this Cell site was such a nice and simple description of the various topics we are studying. It's really very helpful to just have a basic summary in the midst of some of these more complicated processes - just a few simple definitions to throw into the ol' memory bank.

The diagram of the complete human karyotype is cool! I didn't realize that there was such a variety in shape and sizes - I guess I thought they all looked identical. Makes sense that they don't - how appropriate to have a variety and diversity of chromosomes within the very structure that creates diversity among species!

Week Twelve - How Cells Divide

Good to have the feature to replay each side (mitosis or meiosis) after reading the little blurbs. Towards the end of the meiosis cycle I really appreciated the animation and side by side comparison as it really illustrated the major difference that I wasn't aware of (aka didn't remember from high school) - that meiosis results in 4 cells at the end.

Week Eleven - Spike's Gallery

VERY cool - I love the larva one and the daphnia doing the backstroke for some reason - I think because I can recognize a resemblance to some of the structures.

Week Eleven - Website review

This site mentioned that our most powerful electron microscope falls short of observing, first hand, an atom's electron orbitals. However, in the early 12th century, I bet no one thought we'd ever be able to view DNA, but technology changed and alas, we can now! I'm sure it's only a matter of time before we get to see all those orbitals in actuality. 

An interesting correlation: Some strains of bacteria use a polysaccharide outer layer as a protective shield. I've been reading a lot lately about how many polysaccharides (complex carbs such as grains and potatoes) can be extremely difficult for the intestines to break down and properly digest. Makes sense!

I definitely appreciate all the pictures!

Week Eleven - Environment Diversity

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about diversity and my little plot of land I call home, I think of the variety of fruit trees we have! Two kinds of apple trees in one (called a combo, or hybrid? - with the tree trunks kind of wrapped around each other to look like one tree), plum tree (they are little mini plums!), grape vines, cherry tree, a newly planted pear tree, almond tree (I've yet to taste ONE almond because of the cursed squirrels!), and my FAVORITE, huge, beautiful apricot tree. I didn't like apricots until I tasted our apricots. They explode with sweetness, and are unbelievably juicy.

We have jasmine growing on our back deck, and on our front walkway. When it blooms, it is the most wonderful "welcome home" you can have after a long day of work and school. And a huge elephant ear plant in front.

One or two other trees/hedges that I don't know the name of, but I love the big oak tree that we almost cut down when we moved in. I'm so glad we didn't, it's beautiful, and the tree cutter guy told us Oaks are one of the best trees for the environment in terms of global warming. 

Other species - our little doggies! A random hummingbird, but not many of those, nor bees - I guess we don't have enough colorful plantlife. Raccoons that are eerily huge.  Squirrels that taunt our dogs for hours on end, a blue bird, and other birds that are our wake-up alarm, ANTS ANTS ANTS ANTS ANTS that invade our house every summer. Severe infestations!! Bats at dusk. Falcons (or hawks?) that hover in the afternoon. A random mosquito in the summer that gets through our screen.

Week Nine - Animations

So I love the idea of these animations - I'm always a sucker for pictures and colors. I wish it was a little more sophisticated because it could be a really great site. Some improvements:

-have a voice over or written blurb describe what's going on in the animation, and/or including more details as part of a bigger picture

- integrate some of the  animations together - like all the DNA, RNA animations, and how they play off of each other and are related! 

It just kind of left me wanting more.

Side note, the bucky ball reminds me of one of my dogs' toys. :)

Week Nine - Biochemistry Definition

"Biochemistry is the study of molecules in the absence of the rest of the organism."

This caught my eye because it's quite the opposite of TCM! We would never dream to study one component of a whole in isolation.  

I can't seem to really grasp this site. It's one of those where you re-read the same sentences over and over again but have no idea what you read. Doesn't have a great flow, seems kinda jumpy. Or maybe it's just my brain shutting down....

Week Nine - Gene Therapy Ethics

I am torn on the ethics of gene therapy. 

On one hand, especially since diving into the world of TCM and focusing on people and the elements in their most natural state, I can lean to one side and say that we have no business monkeying around  with gene alterations. It seems wrong to mess with the most fundamental and basic component of our being. It seems to be asking for trouble, and thoughts of a blasted open pandora's box enter my imagination. Where do you draw the line? I see lines and lines of perfect little cloned humans marching along. Where do we learn our "hard" life lessons from? Would the world have the same level of inspiration if we didn't see people overcoming health-related obstacles that might be preventable with gene therapy? How do we decide which genes get altered? Only very severe diseases? What qualifies as "very" severe? It seems a slippery slope of the list of diseases lining up to be eliminated with these therapies.......boom! Off comes pandora's lid....

Now on the other hand, I think, yes living in a manner that is as close to natural is the way to go. But we humans are a smart lot, yes we are. Can it be argued that as we encounter more and more disease and problems in this world, perhaps it IS natural evolution, and acceptable and appropriate even, to use our intelligent minds and problem-solve our way out of some of these messes. Why should someone have to live with Hepatitis B if we can figure out a way to eliminate it? 

Much to think about...

Week Eight - Chembalancer Review: Balancing Equations

I could not get the wfu.edu website to work, so I took a look at the richardbowles site instead. I already got the gist of how to balance equations, so I kind of breezed over some of the explanations, but I did learn two new little tidbits: 

1. to balance the larger molecules first, and the simpler elements last, and 

2. that it should be designated whether it is a solid, liquid, gaseous or aqueous, which is helpful to make these random configurations of letters jump off the page a and be a little more tangible and easier to grasp. It makes it less of a straight algebra problem, and more of a an actual chemistry experiment. Very good for beginners to stay engaged!

Week Eight - Chembalancer Review

I always had fun with algebra (nerd!), which is essentially what balancing equations is. This was a nice analytical gift for my heavily overworked theoretical brain. Metal insulting huh? Nourish Yin, Astringe what?? Give me numbers! There were a couple of equations it took me a few tries to hammer out, I guess I'm rusty. But it was a perfect amount of questions to get a sense for how to balance equations, and I made it through the whole set. Yippee!

Week Eight - Semiconductor of the Week: Germanium

Discovered at the end of the 19th century, the semiconductor named after Germany was not very economically useful until the 1940s when it was used for transistors and diodes in electronics. However, it soon was replaced by by its more high quality semiconductor cousin, silicon. Although silicon is a higher quality choice for these uses, it is only so in a much purer state than germanium needs to be. To offset this trade-off in purity, though, it is worth noting that silicon's availability is only limited by its production, while germanium has limited availability in nature. So it seems to make sense to use silicon for these applications since it has better quality, even though you need more of it. 

Dollar for dollar comparison ten years ago: 

Silicon, 1 kg, $10.

Germanium, 1 kg, $1800

The question would be then, economically speaking, how MUCH more silicon do you need to equal germanium's efficacy? 

Germanium is still very valuable today for multiple infrared and optical uses such as thermal imaging for the military, night vision and fire fighting applications as well as fiber optics uses in cameras and microscopes.

Week Seven - What is a Mole?

This website was pretty straightforward, although I liked the first author's description best. He presents the material in a very easy to understand manner, which is always appreciated. I also liked that he wrote out Avogadro's number, using all of the zeroes - makes it seem more tangible, well as tangible as a number of that magnitude can be!

Week Seven - Avogadro's Hypothesis

Well it's kind of cool to think of how we have all these scientific theories across the board, and how today they are accepted. But rarely do we step back in time to see the process of how the theory finally emerged from its hypothesis, as they all do! Also quite interesting is how part of the reason Avogadro's hypothesis was originally rejected was because it contradicted a popular belief at the time. Now that's not very scientific!! This concept can still be seen in modern culture with practices that were accepted at one time, but proven to be wrong/harmful in the end: tobacco usage, processed foods, big & "safe" SUVs, etc. It's not easy to go against the grain of popular thought, but eventually the truth catches on!

Week Seven - Alkaline Earth Metal: Barium

Interesting tidbit - Barium is never found in its pure form in nature because of its high reactivity with air! 

There are lots of common uses for barium:

-the infamous barium shake for contrast purposes for xrays

-used in drilling new oil wells (booo)

-possible source of battery technology for electrical cars (yay!)

-used in glassmaking, rubber production and bricks

Week Six - Alchemy- Science, Magic or Art?

All three!

When alchemy first originated, it is my guess that those practicing must have thought it to be a magical concept. Find the elixir of life, transform elements into gold - those sounds pretty magical to me! That being said, there must have been a definite art to their processes with their experimentations and methods. Art seems to be such an enjoyable concept, regardless of its context - I have to believe these folks were having some fun with their transformations, or at least the mere thought of obtaining their end results. But, whether they knew it or not, their practices also included science. Repeating methods and procedures, perhaps tweaking only the slightest of parameters to try a new approach to reach the same hypothesis. Beaker or no beaker, it is still science!

Week Six - Halogen of the Week: Astatine

I chose Astatine because I have never heard of it!

Unlike the (relatively) non-reactive inert gases, Astatine is very reactive, although the least of all the halogens. It is also the heaviest of them, and it is radioactive as well. Astatine has a very short half-life, so studying this element in great detail has proven to be quite difficult. That coupled with the fact that astatine is the RAREST naturally occurring element on Earth! At any one time the amount of astatine on the Earth's surface totals one teaspoon. That is crazy!

It behaves a lot like iodine, and is even thought to have the accumulative effects that iodine has on the thyroid gland. Although since this element is so rare, the likelihood of the general public being exposed is not likely.

Week Five - Website review: Colors of Elements in a Flame

I tried to play one of the movies, but it didn't work. It's a very, very basic site. Doesn't really give much info, other than what colors each element produces in a flame, but shows a picture too, so that's nice. It made me think, is this how fireworks have different colors, by using different elements?

Week Five - Colors in my fridge

I LOVE food and especially the healing properties of it. I have recently been going through a pretty severe digestive disorder, so my fridge is minimally packed, but only with the freshest and most whole foods. I have really had to embrace the most nutritious foods I can find, including making homemade broth from bones, using ghee, and organic meats, eggs and produce. I just made a colorful soup for dinner with:

orange: carrots

yellow: spaghetti squash

green: basil, celery

white: onions

purple: eggplant

Other options for snacks include the whole rainbow!

red: baked apples w/cider

orange: clementines and cheddar cheese

yellow: baked acorn squash, scrambled eggs

green: avocado

blue: blueberries 

purple: grapes

white: yogurt

Week Five - Inert Gas of the Week: Xenon

Xenon sounds like a stereotypical name for an alien life form, or some faraway planet. It's late as I start this, so why not choose my element based on this :) Lo and behold, xenon is greek for foreigner, stranger, or guest....or alien?!

Like the other inert gases, xenon is not very reactive, and it is heavy, colorless and odorless. In the 1930s it was used for high speed flash photography and strobe lights. It is used in various types of lasers, including lasers for dermatological procedures.

In connecting to our green themed discussions, xenon is used as a general anesthetic for surgery and it is NOT a greenhouse gas like nitrous oxide is! It is a very environmentally friendly choice for this purpose. It can also be a safer choice as when combined with oxygen the rates for hypoxia are decreased. Why is it not being used exclusively you ask? $$$$$$$!!! Xenon is quite expensive (100x more so than nitrous oxide) and a system needs to be developed to contain the gas, recycle it and decontaminate it between uses in order for it to be economically feasible. That being said, some systems are said to be surfacing in Europe. 

With the amount of surgeries being conducted on a daily basis, I hope they will soon integrate xenon into our anesthesia procedures here in the States soon!

Week Four - Website review: Atom Economy

Ummmm, ok I kind of skipped over the #'s and charts because frankly it's a bit over my head. But what I gathered from the reading is that it's using a standardized number to compare, basically the efficiency of various chemical reactions. This seems like a great way to monitor over time how well companies are doing with reducing their chemical wastes and by-products. I'm not certain how strictly, if at all, any of these atom economy % are enforced, but perhaps as stricter government regulations are imposed to enforce a greener chemical industry, these #'s can be of great value. 

Week Four - Discussion Question: Science without Social Responsibility

I think this is a two-fold problem.

1. I think the awareness of how harmful by-products from science affects our planet and health is a newer concept. This is one arena where I think governmental regulations play a HUGE role, and these regulations were just not present and/or strictly enforced. As our awareness grows and we see a grim future if changes are not made, stricter regulations can be enacted and enforced especially as this becomes not just local or industry-specific policy, but a world-wide policy to do all we can to reduce non-green by-products.

2. Capitalism. With new innovations and pharmaceutical products come huge monetary returns. In our capitalistic driven society, there is certainly a no holds barred attitude when it comes to science and its capabilities. Even if that means that our planet and our health suffers at its expense. Many companies have this tunnel vision in keeping their eye on the prize, and thus social responsibility just isn't their concern when the bucks are rolling in.

Week Four - Catalyst of the Week: Nickel

I am quite fascinated/obsessed/intrigued by food and especially in how a lot of the products people consume today are actually made. When I read that margarine, a common household product, is made using nickel, I wanted to see investigate a little more.

Nickel is a transitional metal, and while very reactive, it requires a very high temperature and pressure to do so. Interestingly, most of Earth's nickel is actually found in its core - go digging!

Nickel doesn't come without its adverse effects. In certain forms, it can be a carcinogenic. Nickel carbonyl, a very toxic gas, is a double edged sword due to nickel's inherent toxic nature as well as any carbonyl's ability to release carbon monoxide. Perhaps more familiar to most people is nickel's tendency to cause dermatitis due to allergic reactions to jewelry made with nickel.

Now back to the margarine. Nickel's role in margarine involves hydrogenation, which is a common catalytic function for nickel. The oils used in margarine are mixed with finely ground nickel (remember, toxic!) and then submitted to extremely high temperatures and pressures. When hydrogen gas is added to the mix, nickel causes the hydrogen atoms to be converted into the oil molecules. This is the process that creates trans-fat. Nickel's role is done, but then   bleaching the grey color out of this product, de-odorizing the chemical smell, and the addition of synthetic flavors and vitamins follow. Mmmmmm......

I think I'll stick with butter.

Week Three - Website Review

http://www.knowledgebydesign.com/tlmc/tlmc_cg.html
This site is not for me. I'm not very math-oriented anymore, and I don't find it particularly interesting or useful for my own purposes. I liked the one video that showed the pyramid shaped molecule being superimposed into the pyramid. Probably because it was the most basic! I just didn't really understand what I was looking at for the most part.

NEXT!

I really liked the Water Concepts site. It takes a common molecule, water, and breaks it down in layman's terms that are easy to understand and relate to. I liked that it asked questions throughout the page, to kind of test your knowledge along the way, which is particularly useful as we are (re)learning this material. It's easy to breeze through paragraphs and read without actually comprehending. The questions make you stop and think....am I comprehending?!

Week Three - Transitional Metal: PLATINUM

A few years ago I helped my friend pick out his wedding band, and he had his heart set on one made of platinum. I decided to dig deeper into my friend's symbolic commitment.

Platinum is indeed a transitional metal, extremely wear and tarnish-resistant, appearing greyish-white when pure and sporting the "Pt" logo. I was surprised to read that it is more precious than gold, worth more than twice as much, and about 30x rarer!! 

Platinum is often used in many kinds of medical implants, including pacemakers, and while studies have not revealed evidence that platinum free radicals are toxic to the body, it certainly seems like a logical concern any time a foreign object is introduced into our bodies. After all, some platinum complexes, while great for chemotherapy, have severe side effects such as irreversible kidney damage and deafness. Interestingly enough, platinum as jewelry is a safe choice for sensitive skin as it is hypoallergenic. I wonder what happens inside the body that makes platinum so potentially harmful, and if any of those effects, on a much smaller scale, have transdermal potential effects. 

Week One - Quiz Results

It's nice to revisit a subject, Chemistry in this case, and not feel like you have to learn everything from scratch (unlike TCM Theory, for example)....these concepts are familiar! It turns out my long-term memory may not be as poor as I originally thought.

I kind of guessed on the coffee question - let me talk it out here to see why I answered/guessed correctly. So it's homogenous because it's black coffee - there's no other substances mixed in there like cream, sugar or Bailey's :). It's impure because....I'm not certain on this one, but I think because not all coffee is created equally and maybe different kinds have different acidities or types of beans that can have different chemical reactions...?