Gu: The Venomous Vortex of Ancient Chinese Sorcery
Here is another that may make your skin crawl and your blood run cold! Welcome to the world of Gu, the sinister sorcery that turns creepy crawlies into catastrophic curses! Picture, if you dare, a jar teeming with nature’s most venomous vermin – centipedes, snakes, and scorpions, oh my!
Freeze branding aka CryoBranding and the resulting brands, trichoglyphs, is a technique involving a cryogenic coolant instead of heat to produce permanent marks on a variety of animals
The coolant is used to lower the temperature of a branding iron such that its application to shaved skin will permanently alter hair follicles. The intense cold destroys the pigmentation apparatus in the animal’s hair follicles, leaving al
Cupronickel or copper-nickel (CuNi) is an alloy of copper that contains nickel and strengthening elements, such as iron and manganese
The copper content typically varies from 60 to 90 percent. (Monel is a nickel-copper alloy that contains a minimum of 52 percent nickel.) Despite its high copper content, cupronickel is silver in colour. Cupronickel is highly resistant to corrosion by salt water, and is therefore used for piping,
Heme metabolic intermediates
(porphyrin biosynthesis and heme degradation/excretion) and various other notes
Erich Traub (1906 â 1985) German veterinarian, scientist and virologist who specialized in foot-and-mouth disease, Rinderpest and Newcastle disease
Erich Traub worked directly for Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), as the lab chief of the Nazis’ leading bio-weapons facility on Riems Island. Note: Riems is home to the oldest virological research institution in the world, now called the Friedrich Loeffler
nature’s first Green Fuel Is gold: A Car That Runs On Urine?
The concept of cars running on urine has been explored by several researchers, but it hasn’t yet resulted in a commercially viable vehicle. Here’s what happened with some of the key developments: Ohio University Research (2009): Professor Gerardine Botte developed a catalyst that could e
Light and Medical Tests
From Ask a Scientist: “Serum and plasma both come from the liquid portion of the blood that remains once the cells are removed, but that’s where the similarities end. Serum is the liquid that remains after the blood has clotted. Plasma is the liquid that remains when clotting is preven
Transferrins
Transferrins are not limited to only binding to iron but also to different metal ions.
Hephaestin, first identified in 1999 is homologous with ceruloplasmin
Named after Hephaestus, the Greek god of metal working
Nabil M. Elkassabany, Geralyn M. Meny, Rafael R. Doria, Catherine Marcucci; Green PlasmaâRevisited. Anesthesiology 2008; 108:764â765 doi: https://doi.org/10.1097/ALN.0b013e3181672668
We could find no reports on green plasma in the past 40 yr in either the surgical or the anesthesia literature, which perhaps explains the lack of knowledge on the part of todayâs clinicians. However, we found several articles dating back to the 1960s. At that time, green plasma was appearing in b
It Ain’t Easy Being Green
Is this why they have gone off the rails with the beta carotene and related things? Thoughts for another day. A search for “green plasma” at pubmed turns up 130 articles from 1965 to present. A search for green plasma (without the marks) or ‘green plasma’ at the same place tu
Wolf P, Enlander D, Dalziel J, Swanson J. Green plasma in blood donors. N Engl J Med. 1969 Jul 24;281(4):205. doi: 10.1056/NEJM196907242810407. PMID: 5790495.
ABSTRACT: Recently we have noticed that many plasmas in female blood donors have been extremely green. A green plasma in a unit of blood usually suggests the presence of a gram-negative cryophilic organism such as pseudomonas producing a green pigment that could cause shock if the unit were used, an
Tovey LA, Lathe GH. Caeruloplasmin and green plasma in women taking oral contraceptives, in pregnant women, and in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Lancet. 1968 Sep 14;2(7568):596-600. PMID: 4175158.
ABSTRACT: Of blood donations reaching the Leeds Regional Blood Transfusion Laboratory about 1% have green plasma. Most of these come from women taking oral contraceptives, who constitute about 6% of the blood-donor population. The three conditions in which green plasma is found all have elevated amo
Ceruloplasmin carries more than 95% of the total copper in healthy human plasma and in addition plays a role in iron metabolism. It was first described in 1948.
Ceruloplasmin (or caeruloplasmin) is a ferroxidase enzyme that in humans is encoded by the CP gene. Ceruloplasmin is the major copper-carrying protein in the blood, and in addition plays a role in iron metabolism. It was first described in 1948. Another protein, hephaestin, is noted for it
Follistatin also known as activin-binding protein and formerly known as FSH-suppressing protein (FSP)
Follistatin also known as activin-binding protein is a protein that in humans is encoded by the FST gene. Follistatin is an autocrine glycoprotein that is expressed in nearly all tissues of higher animals. Its primary function is the binding and bioneutralization of members of the TG