‘A teenager was left with severe burns when he accidentally set his hair on fire after rubbing in head lice lotion.
Matthew Moore, 15, of Purbeck, Dorset, had just applied the lotion when he started playing with a cigarette lighter, which ignited his hair. [..]
In a statement, manufacturers of the lotion Thornton & Ross said: “It’s the very first incident of its kind.
“The product is not flammable. It’s been fully approved by various regulatory authorities.”‘ [..]
A spokesman for Dorset Fire and Rescue Service added: “Don’t play with lighters close to your hair and that goes generally when you have applied any type of hair product.”‘
‘ That’s what new tests of liquid soap carried by drummer Don Bolles of the punk band the Germs have determined. The peppermint soap, made by Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps of Escondido, had tested positive for GHB, a rave-scene drug, in a police field test.
Yesterday, however, all charges against the Los Angeles-based musician were dropped by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office after more detailed crime lab tests came back negative for GHB. [..]
“What kind of justice system allows police to use field drug tests that deprive citizens of their God-given liberty, that test positive for something as common as soap?” Bronner said in a news release.’
‘Australians would take more sick days if the government banned cold and flu tablets in a bid to stop the medicine being used to manufacture the drug ice, doctors say.
The government has asked health and law enforcement officials to examine the implications of a blanket ban on the sale of products that contain pseudoephedrine, which includes cold and flu tablets.
Pseudoephedrine can be used to make methamphetamines such as ice and crystal meth.
But Australian Medical Association president Dr Mukesh Haikerwal said he doubted the ban would stop the ice epidemic as drug makers would source pseudoephedrine from elsewhere.’
‘A 2-year-old boy was severely burned Saturday after he went down the slide at an elementary school playground. Someone had broken into the school, stolen several bottles of industrial-strength drain cleaner and splashed it all over the playground equipment, authorities said. [..]
Peyton suffered second- and third-degree burns, mostly on his legs, from the cleaner, which contains a strong concentration of sulfuric acid, said Division Chief Michael Robinson of the Baltimore County Fire Department. No one else was injured.
Duschl said her son’s grandmother was with him at the playground, and he began screaming in pain as soon as he went down his favorite slide.’
‘A team of researchers led by professor Hideo Hono of the Tokyo Institute of Technology has developed a new type of alumina cement that conducts electricity like metal by altering the crystal structure at the nano level.
Ordinary alumina cement made from a lime-alumina compound (C12A7) has a crystal structure consisting of asymmetric cages, making it a poor conductor of electricity. But by sealing the alumina cement compound along with titanium inside a glass tube and heating it to 1,100 degrees Celsius, the researchers were able to create a homogenized, symmetrical cage structure that conducts electricity like metal.’
‘A St. Louis legislator wants to require that baking soda be sold behind the pharmacy counter, as part of an effort aimed at a base ingredient in crack cocaine.
The proposal by Democratic Representative Talibdin El-Amin is modeled after a state law that requires some cold medicines to be placed behind the pharmacy counter because they contain ingredients used to make meth.
The anti-meth law requires customers to show a photo I-D and sign a book specifying their name, address and how much they purchased.
El-Amin’s bill would implement similar requirements for the purchase of sodium bicarbonate, otherwise known as baking soda. The measure was filed last month and has yet to receive a hearing.’
‘It’s 11:30 at night; the kids are on the floor of a yellow school bus that’s parked not in Manhattan but a desolate lot in Williamsburg; and everyone on the bus, including the storyteller, is in high school. Oh, one more thing: they’re all on 5-methoxy-N N-diisopropyltryptamine, better known as the club drug Foxy.
Every two weeks, in some forsaken corner of the city, New York’s privileged teenagers go to “Sindergarten,” a traveling party for 17-year olds who, for a few carefree hours, want to feel like they’re five again. Nursery school-style accessories—snacks, children’s music, storybooks, finger-paints—are supplemented with multiple doses of Foxy methoxy, a hallucinogen similar to Ecstasy said to facilitate a childlike sense of wonder with the world.’
Tryptamines rarely make the news.
‘Grapefruit juice has been shown to affect the metabolism of several drugs. Included in the list of potential target drugs are diazepam, cisapride, cyclosporine, felodipine and other dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers, midazolam, nisoldipine, triazolam, saquinavir, lovastatin, and atorvastatin. The mechanism of this interaction appears to primarily result from inhibition of enzymes in the intestinal wall.
Several constituents of grapefruit juice have been implicated including the flavonoids naringin and naringenin, along with the furanocoumarins, bergapten and 6,7-dihydroxybergamottin. Unfortunately, the content of these varies between different grapefruit juices and varieties of fruit, making it impossible to determine if one is safer than another.’
‘Juicing up your cell phone or iPod may take on a whole new meaning in the future. Researchers at Saint Louis University have developed a fuel cell battery that runs on virtually any sugar source – from soft drinks to tree sap – and has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium ion batteries, they say.
For consumers, that could mean significantly longer time to talk and play music between charges. The new battery, which is also biodegradable, could eventually replace lithium ion batteries in many portable electronic applications, including computers, the scientists say. Their findings were described today at the 233rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Chicago.’
‘In 1998, just after he won a share of the Nobel prize for physics, Robert Laughlin of Stanford University in California was asked how his discovery of “particles” with fractional charge, now called quasi-particles, would affect the lives of ordinary people. “It probably won’t,” he said, “unless people are concerned about how the universe works.”
Well, people were. [..]
Helton was aware of Wen’s work and decided to look for such materials. Trawling through geology journals, his team spotted a candidate – a dark green crystal that geologists stumbled across in the mountains of Chile in 1972. “The geologists named it after a mineralogist they really admired, Herbert Smith, labelled it and put it to one side,” says team member Young Lee. “They didn’t realise the potential herbertsmithite would have for physicists years later.”‘
This woman smears herself with boric acid to prove her point that her neighbour is a liar.
It doesn’t prove a thing. 🙂
(11.9meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘UK scientists have identified a way of using light to rapidly detect the presence of bacteria. [..]
The team have spent five years designing special large molecules, or polymers, which can bind to cells.
Once bound the polymer changes shape and emits a light signal.
This can either be a coloured light, such as a red glow, or a light that is naked to the visible eye but can be detected under a fluorescent lamp, depending on the type of polymer that is used.’
‘A Chandler man has been arrested after his condominium caught fire while he was cooking methamphetamine in a toaster oven, authorities said.
Jonathan Zaletel, 19, was arrested on suspicion of drug manufacturing, drug possession and criminal damage.
Zaletel was cooking meth at about 7 p.m. Tuesday in the 1200 block of North Alma School Road near Ray Road when his condominium bedroom closet caught fire, authorities said.
He unsuccessfully attempted to stop the fire with water and window cleaner. He then went to Wal-Mart to buy a fire extinguisher.’
‘A Los Angeles hospital confirmed on Friday that two U.S. women who became ill during a trip to their native Russia, prompting investigations by both countries, were suffering from thallium poisoning.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said Marina Kovalevsky and her daughter, Yana, were receiving “appropriate treatment” for thallium poisoning. They have been listed in fair but stable condition. [..]
There has been no official explanation of how or why the two women, who according to family members do not work for either government and have no known political or business ties to Russia, were poisoned.’
‘Boffins at Britain’s University of Manchester have created a transistor out of an atom-thick sheet of carbon. The high-speed device is so small only one electron can pass through at once. Crucially, the transistor operates at room temperature making it potentially viable for future microprocessors.
Details of the breakthrough were announced in the science journal Nature this week. The team, led by Professor Andre Geim of the Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology, built the transistor from graphene, an allotrope of carbon that essentially fits all its constituent carbon atoms into a single plane. Discovered only three years ago, graphene is highly conductive.’
Two videos of various fun things you can do with thermite.
(8.1 and 10.2meg Flash videos)
see it here »
‘It sounds as if someone just dropped a tricycle into a meat grinder. I’m sitting inside a narrow conference room at a research facility in Bristol, Connecticut, chatting with Joseph Longo, the founder and CEO of Startech Environmental Corporation. As we munch on takeout Subway sandwiches, a plate-glass window is the only thing separating us from the adjacent lab, which contains a glowing caldera of “plasma” three times as hot as the surface of the sun. Every few minutes there’s a horrific clanking noise—grinding followed by a thunderous voomp, like the sound a gas barbecue makes when it first ignites.
“Is it supposed to do that?” I ask Longo nervously. “Yup,” he says. “That’s normal.”’
‘Soap can be made from just about any kind of fat. Even though fat from bacon, called lard, isn’t the finest of fats to use for making soap, it somehow seemed to be the most exciting. Why? Because bacon is amazing. It has an almost mystical power to it and is a food that can be craved to almost no end. I figured what better way use the extra grease I had from cooking bacon then to turn it into soap!’
You’ve got your propane BLEVE, then you’ve got your perchlorate plant. Fun. 🙂
(13.5meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘A 39-year-old North Little Rock man has been charged with one count of felony child endangerment after a toddler was taken to Arkansas Children’s Hospital with super glue in his eyes and chemical burns on his face. [..]
The Child’s father, Bryen Robison, says his son was blind for a day and a half before receiving medical treatment. He says doctors are hoping the toddler will not have to undergo plastic surgery, but they’re not sure.
Robison told Channel 7 the injuries are the result of super glue, and acetone that was used to remove the glue.’
‘The apparent key to the difference was that LSD activated the receptor in a subtly different way from natural chemicals, said Mount Sinai’s Stuart C. Sealfon, a co-author of the paper. The receptor seems to be “like a switch that can go on in more than one direction,” he explained.
When the mind-bending drug activated the receptor, it not only triggered the typical changes in the cell, it caused additional cell responses, he said. The evidence for this, the group reported, was that the LSD seemed to cause a characteristic chain reaction of brain chemistry involving a class of molecules called G proteins, which are often involved in normal signaling processes.’
This is a video of that woman who smells like a fish.
Followup to: Smells Like Dead Fish
(6.3meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘In an attempt to destroy an indestructible nalgene bottle, this guy uses it to create a dry ice bomb.’
(5.8meg Windows media)
see it here »
`Let me tell you why they are so cool.’
`Everyone knows to keep their curtains closed, drink lots of water and wear sunscreen on a hot day.
But there are other dangers hidden in garages most people would not even think about in the heat.
An Alfredton family learned this the hard way on Tuesday when Ballarat’s maximum temperature topped 38C.
Jan Cornish said she was shocked on that night to discover a can of paint remover stored in the garage had exploded.
Unfortunately the liquid did exactly what it was made to do on two cars – stripped paint.’
`It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.
It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.
Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.’
This seems to be a conversion from the free base to the hydrochloride. Using some dirty looking hydrochloric acid.
(8.1meg Windows media)
see it here »
How do you dispose of 20,000 pounds of war surplus sodium metal?
Looks like a fun job. 🙂
(10.3meg Google video)
see it here »
This gas is denser than air, so you can do some interesting things with it. It will make your voice deeper if you inhale it, and you can float little boats on it. Fun. 🙂
The wiki has more information about sulphur hexafluoride.
see it here »
`Ball lightning could soon lose its status as a mystery, now that a team in Brazil has cooked up a simple recipe for making similar eerie orbs of light in the lab, even getting them to bounce around for several seconds. [..]
A more down-to-earth theory, proposed by John Abrahamson and James Dinniss at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, is that ball lightning forms when lightning strikes soil, turning any silica in the soil into pure silicon vapour. As the vapour cools, the silicon condenses into a floating aerosol bound into a ball by charges that gather on its surface, and it glows with the heat of silicon recombining with oxygen.’
There’s also a ball lightning video.
