Mercurial

We discovered in lab once that if you add acetone to styrofoam packing peanuts you get an interesting moldable plastic-ish type thing. No clue what it is tho

For some reason this seems like a lil ridiculous since I thought about it while I was driving but here goes... So the AIDS virus preferentially attacks T-cells and being a retrovirus has RNA that is translated to DNA via reverse transcriptase which in turn is incorporated into the host cell's genome which codes for the viral structure proteins. The fact that it's preferential for the T-cells means that it preferentially binds with a receptor?/glycoprotein?/sugar? that specifically on the outside of the T-cell. And now the question... Can you design a liposome with the receptors the virus recognizes incorporated into the membrane and thus will attack instead of the T-cells. Will the virus still insert its genetic material into the liposome? My thought is that if this happens the liposome having no nucleus, no DNA and no molecular machinery itself will just trap the DNA rendering the virus harmless and the virus will be unable to reproduce. I realize of course that does nothing to help cells that have already been infected but it might slow down the spread of the infection by rendering some of the viri unable to reproduce. Is there some flaw in this thought. Or are they already trying this? What do yall think?

Just my two cents but can you do integration by parts? [math] \int udv = uv - \int vdu [/math]

I'm enjoying the thought experiment here so I'm gonna go ahead and throw an idea in here which completely has no background, but it seems to me that you need to get away from the idea of filtering out ADP/ATP from the blood system for 2 reasons: 1) it's not likely you're going to have much of that directly in the blood stream it stays in the cell for the most part and 2) it's pretty essential for normal function and you don't want to be removing it in either it's activated (ATP) or unactivated (ADP) form. I remember in your last thread someone mentioned that dialysis is expensive and also tends to be less effective in removing larger molecules vs. smaller ones. As I have no idea how a dialysis machine works so I have no authority to say this would work or not but it seems whatever does this filtering could be modified to be selective for fatty acids using their amphoteric properties to selectively bind them. Unfortunately, proteins can also have these amphoteric properties so your column (?) resin would have to be selective for lipid vs. protein. Then to make this effective it seems like you would have to stimulate fat release from adipose tissue... this is getting more and mroe complicated and well out of my actual knowledge of any of this but I guess it's jsut soe stuff to think about. In short, good luck!

Are there any threads or somethin online that explains the function of a dialysis machine I'm afraid I'm a bit ignorant in this subject

The real issue at hand is that if calories used > calories consumed you lose weight. If you eat less in regular portions and exercise more, the calorie difference increases and you lose weight. That being said people are lazy and that being said eight loss is a lot more complicated than that. For one, when you run out of carbohydrates you may go to glycogen break down, protein metabolism, and fat metabolism and more likely they're all occuring simultaneously. Now I've heard but seen no proof that L-carnitine is a useful supplement since it helps transport lipids into the mitochondria for metabolism but that's just one factor. In short: 1) hormones/chemical signals are not going to help without some side effects 2) ATP is the fundamental energy source for ALL cells. Without this the cell would die. Even fat when metabolised has most of the energy within it's structure converted to ATP (the rest is heat and some is coupled to other reactions. 3) I recommend getting a good biochemistry book, I'm partial to Voet, or look around on google under fat metabolism and learn a bit about cell biolgy and biochemistry before you develop this idea a little further. There's really a whole lot going on here besides hormones, sugar metabolism and what not. In fact, another thing to remember is fat is essentially an energy storage molecule which was essential for survival when we didn't know when our next meal was coming (think before grocery stores, food surplus and domesticated animals). So in essence metabolism is what keeps us alive and is a very complicated process. Learn a bit mroe and then you can work out your idea a lil better. Hope this helps:-)

Aight found two pubmed abstracts http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9781322&dopt=Abstract http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=6571234&dopt=Abstract 1st one says that fat metabolism is brought in from peripheral adipose tissue to the bloodstream first, so basically that means that the fat that is metabolised is not necessarily the fat that is surrounding the muscle you're working on. The second abstract talks about varying ddegrees of carbohydrate and fat metabolism can predominate depending on how well adapted the person is to certain training in whichc ase fat metabolism increases with level of higher training. I also seem to remember somethin about carbs being metabolised at a higher rate when you're doing things such as weight lifting vs. full body work, so like doing reps of bicep curls will blatantly do nothing to decrease the amound of fat around your arms, although this isn't necessarily true for people like bodybuilders who train that way all the time and can efficiently metabolise fat that way. However, my thrid point I can't find any good online documentation on that so I could just be a jive turkey but hope this helps.

That depends a lot on what type of exercise you're doing, the intensity and the duration. There are a couple of websites floating around if you look em up on Google under keywords like fitness, nutrition and what not. I'll see if I can dig a few up for ya.

Ok, so Linear Free Energy Relationships (LFERs) are used to follow the substituent effects on the kinetics or Keq of various reactions. Everything is compared to benzoic acid and what not. Anyway, so what's the prediciting power? Is there a universal Hammett plot that provides predication for any reaction of say the same type (i.e. Sn2) Also, if anyone has any insight as to how LFERs are used to determine affects of mutations in enzyme catalytic sites, I would love to read that too. Thanks

I read the beginning, missed the entire middle and saw the end of this thread (coincidentally much like my study methods for an exam) but from what I understand and this comes from Reiki masters which makes it ok since this is a pseudoscience thread anyway. Apparently, there was "energy" shift that started a decade ago and will reach its peak in 2012 (if anyone know what "energy" they're talking about I'd love to discuss the difference between the scientific definition of energy and the stolen definition of energy they use). There will be the unawakened, the awakened, the enlightened and the unenlightened. And 2012 will mark the beginning of a new era where the enlightened will fix the problems of the world (or something like that) And then ona separate note there's somethin called indigo children (named because of their alleged blue aura) and the these "indigo children" have been coming in increasing numbers since about the time of the beginning of this energy shift. And they are supposed to be enlightened in some way. now, I knw this all sounds crazy and I have a hard time listening to it, but I guess it's better to keep an open mind and really I'm just relaying what I know maybe it will be of some use to somebody. And really I can welcome any of it if it's true as long as I don't have to become vegetarian.

I think the real issue here is to find our model nerds... I wonder if there's one of those calendar's for this already. hmm...

It's not so much that they can't pair up it's just 1) not energetically favorable b/c of H-bonding and 2) there is a lot of cell machinery that corrects these errors (most of the time) when they happen. if you take a look at the "wiggle position" in tRNA during translation (I've completely switched to RNA on ya real quick) These frequently don't perfectly base pair and sometimes even have different nucleic acids than the normal ACTGU in this 3rd position. That accounts for 4x4x4 = 64 different possible codons coding for only 20 (I think?) amino acids.

Yea I guess I don't really know much about which is why the assignment will be a good idea I don't really know enough to know what I'm asking either. Anyway, thanks for the help

two things: 1) I know that depending on how often you drink, your liver cells can adapt by upregulating the initial enzyme in alcohol metabolism (ethanol oxidase? oxidase? dunno) and 2) I know at least with asians they (we ) lack catalase which is why our face gets all red when we drink alcohol. Have no idea what the connection is there but that's my two cents on the subject

I'm supposed to be doing a topic search for my Advanced Organic Class on some topic of interest in the general fielf of Physical Organic. I was considering either antiaromaticity, pericyclic reaction or bond delocalization. Yall have any other suggestions of what might be a really interesting topic for this? Thanks a lot