Adventure Ausrama Blog

Sewerage is just a load of crap. If you think this you are on the wrong track. It can be a valuable commodity. The cleaning process begins with a giant comb that lets the good stuff through and blocks the solids - tampons, tennis balls, toys, sneakers, marbles, cardboard and so on are discarded. The second stage involves very fine polymer membranes. The membrane pores are less than a millionth of a millimeter thick which filters out microscopic contaminants. That is all there is to it, just fine filters Purified sewerage is used to water crops and is pumped into the mains water supply for drinking by the public. It is claimed that it is better than bottled water from mineral springs. This of course is a bold-faced lie. It still contains some ultra-fine remnants of crap! ◆   Chemistry by Ty Buchanan   ◆ Adventure Australia Funny Animal Photos Funny Weird Things Articles News Reviews ● Vista Computer Solutions Blog                Australian Blog   ★  

The normal procedure when cataracts become problematic is surgery. This should change as new eye drops are adopted across the world. A chemical has been identified which stops the disease and reverses it. Luckily the chemical is soluble so formulation of eye drops should be easy. Cataracts develop when crystallin proteins clump together generally with age. Crystallins are the main element in the eye lens. When these proteins are damaged the lens does not function well. Using differential scanning fluorimetry, lanosteral was first found. It reduced the cumulative damage but it was not soluble and had to be injected. More work resulted in the isolation of "compound 29". This was soluble and worked just the same. The new compound stopped crystallins from forming dangerous amyloids. Furthermore, existing amyloids were dissolved. In tests on mice, their cataract affected lenses became clearer. Tissue taken from human cataract sufferers also became more transpa

It seems diseases that were thought to be long gone are reappearing. The medical community are not prepared for this and do not know how to respond. Scarlet fever is being communicated again from person to person. Oddly, this is in the UK and countries in Asia. China is the hotspot with 100,000 cases. Hong Kong has had 5,000. The UK reported 12,000 instances of infection. Scarlet fever is a childhood disease. Symptoms include a very sore throat, skin rash, headache and vomiting. Antibiotics are the favored treatment. However, bacterial resistance to antibiotics is an issue. The great "fall-back", penicillin, is the most effective. Fears are that it will not work as its use continues. ◆ Chemistry by Ty Buchanan   ◆ Adventure Australia Funny Animal Photos Funny Weird Things Articles News Reviews ● Vista Computer Solutions Blog                Australian Blog   ★   Adventure Australia ALL BLOG ARTICLES · ──► ( BLOG HOME PAGE) . . . .

Catching dengue fever is a constant fear in Australia. Like malaria it is spread by mosquitoes. Its full name Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever. You can become very sick indeed if you develop the hemorrhagic form, though it seldom causes death. Drugs made for sepsis infection are being used to treat dengue in mice. They has yet to be used on humans. Hopefully new methods for early detection and treatment with drugs will stop progression to the severe dengue. A new finding could move treatment along a bit. The dengue virus NS1 protein causes immune cells to "leak" blood vessels. TLR4 is the pathway that triggers the response. Some existing drugs do block this pathway. Ironically, many of them did not stop sepsis. They were failures! Other diseases also use the NS1 method of infection. Work has to be done to explore the battery of drugs already available to hopefully find successful treatments for these related illnesses. ◆ Chemistry by Ty Buchanan   ◆ Adv

There could be link to diet for tuberculosis. It seems people with diabetes are likely to also have tuberculosis in tropical Australia. Little is said about it, but tuberculosis is the leading cause of bacterial death in the world. It has also been known for some time about the predilection to have tuberculosis in people with diabetes. It could be a "racial" trait. Australian Aboriginals and those of Torres Strait descent are high on the list. having diabetes makes sufferers susceptible to immune dysregulation with opens people to infection generally. It is only rational to screen those with diabetes for tuberculosis. This is not currently done. It is not known if dysregulation is the cause of problem. Historical data is not much help because diabetes was not an identifiable disease while TB was, in past centuries. Research is being done to find find the reason for it. Reduce the prevalence of diabetes and cases of TB fall. It is as simple as that. ◆ Sc

Many children have a form of epilepsy that is genetic, handed down from a parent. Female-only epileptic syndrome is a case in point. It is rare but it remains a debilitating problem.  At birth babies seem to be normal, but in a few months they begin having seizures. e Australian scientists have pinned down the genetic mutation responsible for its expression. Professor Gecz says that the 19 (PCDH19) gene is the mutation triggering the ailment. Females have two X chromosome which determines their sex. This duality of X triggers epilepsy in girls. The main issue with female-only epilepsy is that it causes intellectual disability because seizures cause damage. A deficiency of the allopregnanolone hormone is the main factor in the onset of the ailment. This is an effect caused by the genetic disposition. When the hormone is brought back into balance at puberty permanent damage has already been done. The research continues.   ♣ ◆   Economics by Ty Buchana n   ◆ Adve

The trade deal between Australia and China is off to a bad start. Australia becomes an open market for quack traditional Chinese medicine. China is already responsible for the demise of African animals because of superstitious beliefs about curative properties of ordinary parts of animal bodies. The trade deal between Australia and China is off to a bad start. Australia becomes an open market for quack traditional Chinese medicine. China is already responsible for the demise of African animals because of superstitious beliefs about curative properties of ordinary parts of animal bodies. Australia has not even policed homeopathy properly. Constituents are diluted into insignificance where they cannot possibly have any effect. They are harmless at best. Homeopaths live well on treatment based on a mythical foundation. Under the agreement between China and Australia Chinese herbalists will be allowed to register and set up shop in Australia without any accreditation.

Queensland University of Technology plans to use genetic modifiers in vitamins as a treatment for migraine. This is problematic as health professionals do not really know what migraine is. Botox injections to the forehead has been used successfully to relieve the pain to date. It is quite a "quacky" area of medicine. About the only main factor about it is that it causes a feeling of nausea along with the pain and an aversion to light. India is the test ground for the gene treatment. A migraine marker in the Parsi population is the target. If vitamins are useful per se , why is the ailment common in the West where we take too many of them? As a child and adolescent I suffered from it. In my opinion it was brought on when the eyes were overworked. Reading small text was a no no for me. As I grew older it faded and I can say I have not had a migraine for 20 years.  Have I changed my diet or vitamin intake - not really. Just how scientists make the link betwe

Rheumatoid arthritis is a widespread complaint. It is usually a malady of the elderly, but the young can succumb to it too. About the only treatment available is replacement of joints with artificial ones and analgesics. A team at the University of Queensland has taken a new approach. They have developed a vaccine. Many diseases are caused by the body attacking its own tissue. Arthritis is one of these. If the immune response is suppressed, inflammation decreases. This is how the new vaccine works. All Westerners have high inflammation levels. This may be a good thing to fight injuries. However, continued long term inflammation does damage to the body. Once switched on and the immediate danger solved it needs to be turned off. The new method involves taking a sample of the patient's immune cells which are then modified in the lab. This is injected back into the patient. The immune system no longer sees the modified peptide as foreign. Other problematic

There is a new drug for malaria called artemisinin. It will be synthesized in a chemical process and the procedure is "green". The French pharmaceutical company Sanofi   produces a third of the world's demand annually. Unfortunately, the synthetic drug is expensive. Click to enlarge. Most of artemisinin is extracted from sweet wormwood. This is simple but the synthetic version involves the conversion of glucose into artemisinic acid: then three oxygen atoms are bonded on to produce artimsinin. It is complex. The use of toxic dichloromethane is not used in the new process. It was discovered, ironically, that water greatly assists the synthesis. It packs molecules together. Water-soluble photocatalyst is indeed clean and green. The result is a product that is purer than artemisinin taken directly from wormwood. ✴ Chemistry by Ty Buchanan ✴ http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://adventure--austr