You might not think that something called "Restless Leg Syndrome" (RLS) is all that serious, but for those of us that suffer from it, it is a major pain in the... well, the leg.
If I don't get to sleep early enough, I risk lying awake with RLS, wanting to rip my leg off and beat it against the wall. This basically means a night with really, really crappy sleep, which everyone can agree is miserable.
So when adverts come on the TV for things that I have (or think I have, as my wife points out), I pay attention. I'm not happy that I'm paying more and more attention to these adverts as I age, but that's another post about sampling frequency...
There is a product called Requip by GlaxoSmithKlein for treatment of RLS, and one of the side effects quickly stated at the end of the TV advert really caught my attention: "Also tell your doctor if you or your family notices that you develop any unusual impulses or behaviors, such as pathological gambling or hypersexuality," and later: "Most patients were not bothered enough to stop taking Requip."
Duh. Of course I'm not going to be bothered enough if I have pathological needs for gambling and sex.
Hmm. I think I'll stick with beating my leg against the wall, thanks.
Showing posts with label chemistry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chemistry. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Metrology
Earlier this year I went to a meeting at the OAS about metrology.
Metrology? Yaaaawn. Isn't the definition of units settled? Isn't that something you do in grade school?
Well, yes, and no. The study of units (metrology) mostly has to do with commerce - just as it did over two millennia ago when rulers wanted to ensure that merchants were measuring properly (and probably the motivation was not to protect the customer, but to ensure proper payment of taxes).
When you buy a thermometer, you'd like to know that it was accurate, right? Not taking your child to the hospital for an actual fever of 105 when it shows up as 103 on your thermometer could have serious repercussions. And these serious errors are out there: most thermometers in the world are made in (surprise, surprise) China. In a recent test carried out by the Uruguayan metrology lab, over 20% of the 120,000 annually imported thermometers for home use were found to be seriously defective. Similar failure rates were found for sphigmomanometers and other medical measuring equipment. (Source: Alexis Valquis, German Federal Technical and Physical Institute, PTB)
There are also cases where mismatches between standards can have large economic repercussions. The market for Canadian white paper is about $5 billion/year, with a great deal of this being in the European market. However, the North American and European 'standards' for paper 'brightness' differed by 0.5% to 1% on the same papers, and this implied an extra annual cost in bleach to Canadian mills of about $65 million to meet the European 'standard.' An intercomparison and recalibration removed the problem, which was completely artificial.
Even when you decide to use a standard from which to measure, you have to make sure you are using a common standard, since there are many different 'standards' out there. On building a bridge over the Rhine between Germany and Switzerland at Laufenberg, construction was almost finished when both sides realized there was a 54 cm height mismatch between the sides. They had known there was a 27 cm difference between the national standards, because the Swiss used the Trieste sealevel standard, while the Germans used the Amsterdam standard. However, since 54 = 27 x 2, someone forgot to check which one was actually higher than the other, and the corrections were applied in the wrong direction. You would think that two countries with such careful engineers would have caught this before it became a really expensive fix. (Source: Swiss Government website (in German))
Here's a good example of where you might be concerned (besides driving over a bridge where the sides didn't match): the amount of lead in wine. Samples from the same batch of wine were sent to labs all over the world, and the labs were asked to measure how much lead (Pb) was in the sample. Here's the spread in the reported results:
The stunning part of this is that the 10% spread is the narrow grey line, and the actual spread is well over 50%. The good news is that the national labs responsible for most of our safety got it right to within the 10% band. (Source: J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2001, 16, 1091–1100, DOI: 10.1039/b103248h)
But what do you do if the 'standard' is actually changing? Incredibly, this is actually happening to the kilogram. As you might expect, for a long time the standard has been an actual physical object: a platinum and iridium cylinder cast in 1889 that is kept under high security at BIPM in Paris, along with six official copies (image below). Along with the original, many duplicates were made, which were shipped off to many countries existing at the time for them to use as their national references. The availability of many duplicates allows some sophisticated statistical studies, and they have allowed the rather odd conclusion to be drawn that, despite the security, it can be reliably demonstrated that this cylinder has lost about 50 micrograms over its lifetime. This change may seem small, but it has huge implications for the metric system, since there are many other derived units which depend on the base unit of the kilogram. There are all sorts of efforts underway to define the kilogram using physics rather than a physical object, as has been done with the meter (the meter is now how far light travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second, rather than the distance between two marks on a 'reference stick' kept in Paris). There is currently a struggle between two camps: one which wants to generate a new object - an ultraprecise sphere of ultrapure silicon, and the other which wants to simply agree on a specific number of Carbon-12 atoms (Source: Eurekalert article).
Another point about the metric system - there are three countries that have failed to convert: Liberia, Myanmar and the good old US of A. Good company to keep. And how do these countries define their own standards in these older units? They refer to the metric system standards, of course.
Metrology? Yaaaawn. Isn't the definition of units settled? Isn't that something you do in grade school?
Well, yes, and no. The study of units (metrology) mostly has to do with commerce - just as it did over two millennia ago when rulers wanted to ensure that merchants were measuring properly (and probably the motivation was not to protect the customer, but to ensure proper payment of taxes).
When you buy a thermometer, you'd like to know that it was accurate, right? Not taking your child to the hospital for an actual fever of 105 when it shows up as 103 on your thermometer could have serious repercussions. And these serious errors are out there: most thermometers in the world are made in (surprise, surprise) China. In a recent test carried out by the Uruguayan metrology lab, over 20% of the 120,000 annually imported thermometers for home use were found to be seriously defective. Similar failure rates were found for sphigmomanometers and other medical measuring equipment. (Source: Alexis Valquis, German Federal Technical and Physical Institute, PTB)
There are also cases where mismatches between standards can have large economic repercussions. The market for Canadian white paper is about $5 billion/year, with a great deal of this being in the European market. However, the North American and European 'standards' for paper 'brightness' differed by 0.5% to 1% on the same papers, and this implied an extra annual cost in bleach to Canadian mills of about $65 million to meet the European 'standard.' An intercomparison and recalibration removed the problem, which was completely artificial.
Even when you decide to use a standard from which to measure, you have to make sure you are using a common standard, since there are many different 'standards' out there. On building a bridge over the Rhine between Germany and Switzerland at Laufenberg, construction was almost finished when both sides realized there was a 54 cm height mismatch between the sides. They had known there was a 27 cm difference between the national standards, because the Swiss used the Trieste sealevel standard, while the Germans used the Amsterdam standard. However, since 54 = 27 x 2, someone forgot to check which one was actually higher than the other, and the corrections were applied in the wrong direction. You would think that two countries with such careful engineers would have caught this before it became a really expensive fix. (Source: Swiss Government website (in German))
Here's a good example of where you might be concerned (besides driving over a bridge where the sides didn't match): the amount of lead in wine. Samples from the same batch of wine were sent to labs all over the world, and the labs were asked to measure how much lead (Pb) was in the sample. Here's the spread in the reported results:
The stunning part of this is that the 10% spread is the narrow grey line, and the actual spread is well over 50%. The good news is that the national labs responsible for most of our safety got it right to within the 10% band. (Source: J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2001, 16, 1091–1100, DOI: 10.1039/b103248h)
But what do you do if the 'standard' is actually changing? Incredibly, this is actually happening to the kilogram. As you might expect, for a long time the standard has been an actual physical object: a platinum and iridium cylinder cast in 1889 that is kept under high security at BIPM in Paris, along with six official copies (image below). Along with the original, many duplicates were made, which were shipped off to many countries existing at the time for them to use as their national references. The availability of many duplicates allows some sophisticated statistical studies, and they have allowed the rather odd conclusion to be drawn that, despite the security, it can be reliably demonstrated that this cylinder has lost about 50 micrograms over its lifetime. This change may seem small, but it has huge implications for the metric system, since there are many other derived units which depend on the base unit of the kilogram. There are all sorts of efforts underway to define the kilogram using physics rather than a physical object, as has been done with the meter (the meter is now how far light travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second, rather than the distance between two marks on a 'reference stick' kept in Paris). There is currently a struggle between two camps: one which wants to generate a new object - an ultraprecise sphere of ultrapure silicon, and the other which wants to simply agree on a specific number of Carbon-12 atoms (Source: Eurekalert article).
Another point about the metric system - there are three countries that have failed to convert: Liberia, Myanmar and the good old US of A. Good company to keep. And how do these countries define their own standards in these older units? They refer to the metric system standards, of course.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Póngase las pilas!
A very useful primer on batteries, written by Isidor Buchmann, via Adam Goddard of the NewtonTalk list:
Battery University
Battery University
Saturday, July 29, 2006
A Tour of Law:
Cyclist Floyd Landis, during Thursday night's conference call from an undisclosed location in Europe, referring to his drug test results showing high levels of testosterone after winning the Tour de France:
"I would like to be assumed innocent until proven guilty, since that's the way we do things in America."
Oh, please. This is exactly the kind of thing people hate about us Americans. Ignorance about where we are in the world, ignorance about history, and ignorance about our own country.
FLOYD:
Sheesh. Ask Cheryl Crow about roadies. She knows.
"I would like to be assumed innocent until proven guilty, since that's the way we do things in America."
Oh, please. This is exactly the kind of thing people hate about us Americans. Ignorance about where we are in the world, ignorance about history, and ignorance about our own country.
FLOYD:
- You were in France when you said that, not America
- Only 49 states assume innocence
- The exception is Louisiana; why?
- Because they follow the Napoleonic code - their legal tradition is French
- ergo...
Sheesh. Ask Cheryl Crow about roadies. She knows.
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Curie, Becquerel, Roentgen, Sievert, Grey:
Recent news of a mercury contamination incident at a local school reminded me of several incidents where radioactive materials were circulating in communities unaware of the dangers.
The worst of these has to be the 1987 Brazilian cesium-137 contamination case in Goainia. A piece of medical equipment in an abandoned building was torn open by two men scavenging for scrap metal, and the 4000 Curie Cs-137 source was removed and opened. They marveled at the glow, and proceeded to extract, separate and distribute the material to people in their neighbourhood. People rubbed it on their bodies in order to sparkle. People carried it in their pockets for luck. Two hundred forty four people were later found to be contaminated, and over a dozen probably died from the exposure. (source)
Then again, some people know the details what they are doing, but are a little young to comprehend the wider implications, like David Hahn. David was a Michigan boy scout trying to earn an Atomic Energy merit badge by building a functioning breeder reactor with the americium, radium, and thorium from commonly available items. The shed he worked in and most of his backyard is now buried in Utah after his amazingly productive makeshift lab was declared a Superfund cleanup site. You might not completely understand what your children are up to, but always be sure you know roughly what they are doing, like building a nuclear pile whose radioactivity can be detected five houses away. (Ken Silverstein's article in Harper's Magazine.)
A third incident I remember hearing about is probably a myth, since I could not find any trace of it, even on RADSAFE, which is about as authoritative a source as I could find. As I remember it, some Federal facility (LANL?) purchased a set of lawn furniture for an outdoor cafeteria remodeling project, and when it arrived, it set off the radiation detectors designed to keep radioactive materials from going out the gate. The source was traced to some medical equipment that was mistakenly smelted in a batch of scrap metal, thereby contaminating a large amount of recycled metal. If the federal facility had not purchased this particular batch of furniture, it was unlikely that this contamination would have been found.
Even if the above is a myth, there is so much international commerce that recycling practices will probably provide future examples of importing hot items. In November 2000, the Carrefour supermarket chain was advised that a series of Chinese-manufactured watch bracelets was contaminated with cobalt-60, and they had to recall the product. This was only detected because an employee of the French Tricastin nuclear facility had purchased the watch, and set off detectors at the plant. (NRPB statement, the original OPRI (IRSN) statement seems to be inaccessible).
Similar incidents have occurred lately around the Iraqi nuclear research center at Al-Tuwaitha, where looters removed all kinds of containers full of radioactive materials. The contents (like yellowcake) were simply dumped, and the containers were used for foodstuffs. The impact of this widespread exposure to some fairly high levels of radiation will not be felt for some time, and of course much of the damage is psychological.
Now I'm starting to itch. Where's my Geiger counter? And why can't nuclear science sort out its units?
---------------------
Added June 8, 2009: Radioactive Cheese Grater: http://is.gd/TonB
The worst of these has to be the 1987 Brazilian cesium-137 contamination case in Goainia. A piece of medical equipment in an abandoned building was torn open by two men scavenging for scrap metal, and the 4000 Curie Cs-137 source was removed and opened. They marveled at the glow, and proceeded to extract, separate and distribute the material to people in their neighbourhood. People rubbed it on their bodies in order to sparkle. People carried it in their pockets for luck. Two hundred forty four people were later found to be contaminated, and over a dozen probably died from the exposure. (source)
Then again, some people know the details what they are doing, but are a little young to comprehend the wider implications, like David Hahn. David was a Michigan boy scout trying to earn an Atomic Energy merit badge by building a functioning breeder reactor with the americium, radium, and thorium from commonly available items. The shed he worked in and most of his backyard is now buried in Utah after his amazingly productive makeshift lab was declared a Superfund cleanup site. You might not completely understand what your children are up to, but always be sure you know roughly what they are doing, like building a nuclear pile whose radioactivity can be detected five houses away. (Ken Silverstein's article in Harper's Magazine.)
A third incident I remember hearing about is probably a myth, since I could not find any trace of it, even on RADSAFE, which is about as authoritative a source as I could find. As I remember it, some Federal facility (LANL?) purchased a set of lawn furniture for an outdoor cafeteria remodeling project, and when it arrived, it set off the radiation detectors designed to keep radioactive materials from going out the gate. The source was traced to some medical equipment that was mistakenly smelted in a batch of scrap metal, thereby contaminating a large amount of recycled metal. If the federal facility had not purchased this particular batch of furniture, it was unlikely that this contamination would have been found.
Even if the above is a myth, there is so much international commerce that recycling practices will probably provide future examples of importing hot items. In November 2000, the Carrefour supermarket chain was advised that a series of Chinese-manufactured watch bracelets was contaminated with cobalt-60, and they had to recall the product. This was only detected because an employee of the French Tricastin nuclear facility had purchased the watch, and set off detectors at the plant. (NRPB statement, the original OPRI (IRSN) statement seems to be inaccessible).
Similar incidents have occurred lately around the Iraqi nuclear research center at Al-Tuwaitha, where looters removed all kinds of containers full of radioactive materials. The contents (like yellowcake) were simply dumped, and the containers were used for foodstuffs. The impact of this widespread exposure to some fairly high levels of radiation will not be felt for some time, and of course much of the damage is psychological.
Now I'm starting to itch. Where's my Geiger counter? And why can't nuclear science sort out its units?
---------------------
Added June 8, 2009: Radioactive Cheese Grater: http://is.gd/TonB
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