ChienShiungW

Hey friend. 'Sup?

After a long time away, I have re-imerged, employed, learning to be more of a reader, more fond of simple math, and dragging a friend here with me.

Can we have an atmospheric science forum please? Or even an environmental science forum?

How about Atmospheric science?

I'm taking microeconomics. If anyone knows enough to help, then it is a brilliant idea. If not, eh.

Oh wow. What kind of resources do you need?

Thank you.

What do you mean free-for-all? I don't know what that means. Oh, and congrats on being a columnist.

Hi, I wasn't sure where this goes. Someone sneezes around christmas trees. It's is worse as the tree gets older. (I am assuming that this is a tree that is cut and set up at home.) Is there something about the tree that changes as time passes that woud cause the sneezing to be worse? Mold? Dost? Fragrance put out? I really don't know. Please help me. Thank you.

I'm not sure that you can find a physical thing that is the life force. I believe that a life force exists. I've heard of cases where a married person will be so heart broken by the death of his or her spouse that they loose the will to live. There are also cases where a man who has no hobby doesn't really have much to live for retires and he dies a few years later. Maybe its something else that made them die, but even if it did, there might be something else that chose to accept that fate. (I don't mean to disregard the state of the body. A beheaded medivial criminal might have desparately wanted to live, but it just doesn't work that way.) Sometimes a person wants to live so much even with so many things and somehow they don't die. I think that it is the result of some kind of life force in each of us. That is something that is so closely tied to the physical realm, at the same time exists outside of it, like the mind-body connection. In a way, all creatures probably have some kind of life force like that. If you try to smash two bacteria together, (I am assuming that they are alive) you are trying to smash to life forces then together. They cannot become on. At least one entity will die in the process. (I hope I don't sound totally wacked.)

I don't know why this would be and I'm not going to look it up, but the Jewish law was given long before refridgerators to people who lived out in the hot Middle Eastern desert. Could something like bacteria developing in milk and meat be a reason for the original Jewish law? Like if a certain amount of bacteria or something built up in the meat and a certain amount in the milk and alone the amount that would be consumed would be fine but together it was enough to cause at least some kind of health problem?

If you are really interested in autoimmune diseases, you might also take a look at ones caused by viruses. Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrom believed to be caused be epstien bar virues, the same group that includes the disease mono.

I don't know if this helps but sometimes I am in a bad mood and I don't cheer up easily except when I am around other people and interact with them, but I don't want to yet at the same time I want to be around people. Then if I do what I want and stay by myself, it is kind of like a cycle of some kind of somewhat depressed mood feeding itself on my isolation. When for some reason I break it and go interact with people, I feel much more cheerful and social. I don't know if that helps at all though.

If I said pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, would you believe me? Very cool.

A hypotenuse is the long side of a right triangle.

LOL. Wow, I want one. That is so cool! They even have ebola. Sleeping sickness is pretty. That's crazy. I like these.

Hi, I'm Kira. I'm not used to one long welcome thread. I am slightly intimidated by physics and advanced math which combined with now now greater interest in those and chemistry which I fell in love with last spring combined with my declining interest in biology which I was always better at have resulted in me not being a science major. Environmental health has been an issue in my family, so I hold a strong interest in that. I really want to go to grad school one day, but it will be hard to pay for.

I'm sorry. I had written this for somewhere else too and accidentally left that in there. Please forgive my oversite. I didn't see a welcome thread forum like I am used to (I just found the thread) and I rather wanted to post something. I will be more careful in the future. In the same way that fragrances can harm health, smog harms us. Now most people who have lived around smog are probably familiar with the fact that it’s not healthy, but there are ways to get around some of the health impacts of it. First, out door activity should be done more in the morning than in the mid to late afternoon. Also, if you get migraines, you might notice more of them with highway driving because of the increases smog from the cars. Hepafilters can be your friend because the suck out a lot of the small particulate smog. These are good to know, but there is more than that. Know your smog. Three common smog types are PM10, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone. PM10 is the small particulate smog and is usually gray. Now, for a lot of this I’m not sure what you can do unless it’s a yellow gray. A more yellow gray smog will likely have more sulfur content. Vitamin B12 helps with the body’s reaction to this. NO2 or nitrogen dioxide is the more brown smog. It causes inflammation and has an immediate reaction and a delayed reaction twenty-four to forty-eight hours later. Vitamin B6 acts has an anti-inflamitory effect, as does Aleve but it wouldn’t be good to take painkillers all summer unless you really hurt. Nitrogen dioxide will react and leave more ozone in its place after a hot day. Ozone is the one that antioxidants are good for. With ozone, you end up with stray oxygen atoms moving around and causing damage inside you. Antioxidents include various fruits and stuff, and vitamins I believe. Grape seed extract, available in concentrated pill form or grapes also serves as an antioxidant.

Do you ever buy products listing chemicals or fragrances? Those are affecting your health. Every time you are exposed to smog, car exhaust, fragranced products, etc., those chemicals create stress in your body which is forced to respond to it. For a while, your body may be able to respond simply with “adaptation.” The effects of stressors, including chemicals can build up to such a level over time that your body cannot adapt to it and your body will react. If a significant source or the stress that your body is adapting to is from a chemical or chemicals, your body will react to that chemical or those chemicals. The point where your body has been exposed enough to react is known as “total load.” The reaction doesn’t have to be a big dramatic reaction to be a chemical reaction like this. It could be a simple stuffy nose, difficulty concentrating, anxiety, head aches, peculiar body sensations, depression, dyscalculia, impaired abstract reasoning, difficulty breathing, etc. Reactions may have different symptoms with different people or with different chemicals. Once your body has reacted to a chemical, you are sensitized to that chemical. This means that you are chemically intolerant to the chemical to which you reacted. This is not an allergy because there is no histamine involved in the reaction. In fact, allergists have along with others spent years baffled by how this reaction occurs. It is not simply a psychological matter because we are biochemical beings affected by the chemicals around us. Repeated exposure will result in greater sensitivity to the chemical. The degree of reaction may grow and the amount of exposure over a period of time needed to cause a reaction may cause a reaction may decrease. Certain chemicals are sensitizers, meaning they break down barriers to being sensitive to other chemicals. A study be USC comparing two groups of people, one that knew they were chemically sensitive and one that didn’t think they were chemically sensitive, found that a surprising amount of those who did not think they were sensitive actually were sensitive. Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) is a recognized toxic injury that even inhibits some from working. There are places and instances where parts of the government have acknowledged it, but it has been a hard fight for people with MCS because of the complexity of their illness. There are people taking at least 5 prescription medicines several times a day and pray that their insurance covers their medicine when their doctors change the medicines that they are taking. Chemical injury like this does not come only from acute exposure but also from low level long term exposure. This is part of why there are over 17 million asthmatics in this country. I have had asthma ever since I was young, we had no air-conditioning, and the smog was three times what it is now where we live. Names to look up for more information: National Library of Medicine (pubmed), doctor’s use this as a resource Sheila Bastien-PhD neuro psychologist, psychological and physical aspects of MCS Rae-clinical ecologist, more studies,puzzling cases than any other at least as of a couple of years ago Rowe (Fragranced products information network) Fpinva Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes By Nicholas Ashford & Claudia Miller