Today I Learned

[gmax137]

I'd like to see the overlaps, perhaps a Venn diagram.

 

[Astronuc]

TIL that the name "Meccano" was supposed to suggest "make and know", apart from the obvious mechanical concept.

For non-British members, this was a model construction set similar to the US Erector Set, with which it completed for a few years before withdrawing from the American market.

My brother and I used both systems when were young.

 

[DaveE]

From a 2013 Public Policy Polling poll ....

0.015% hold PhDs in physics.

I wonder when I read these polls how many of the small response items are people just #$@^&# with the pollsters. 4% believe in shape shifting reptilian people? Really? 1 out of every 25 people? Not in my community (I think hope).

Then I wonder if the pollsters add questions like that just to determine the legitimacy of the responant.

 

[symbolipoint]

DaveE,
Watch for false dilemma polls. ( in ref. to post #6873)

 

[Swamp Thing]

TIL about Operation London Bridge.

Operation London Bridge was the funeral plan for Queen Elizabeth II. The plan included the announcement of her death, the period of official mourning, and the details of her state funeral. The plan was created as early as the 1960s and revised many times in the years before her death in September 2022.

The phrase "London Bridge is down" was to be used to communicate the death of the Queen to the prime minister of the United Kingdom and key personnel, setting the plan into motion

The idea of a bowler-hatted official solemnly intoning "London Bridge is down" seemed to be not without its comedic possibilities, so I requested AI to come up with a Monty Python style script on this premise.

Here is AI's effort:

[SCENE START]
REGINALD: (Picking up a secure red rotary phone, voice trembling with gravity) It is done. (Beat) Give me the Commissioner.
[Split screen: ARTHUR’S phone rings. He picks up with a greasy hand.]
ARTHUR: Hello, Pike & Sons? We’re a bit backed up at the moment, if it’s about the tiling in Bromley, we’ve run out of grout.
REGINALD: (Ignoring him, speaking in a rehearsed, somber tone) The clouds have gathered over the Thames. The Eagle has nested. London Bridge has fallen.
ARTHUR: (Spits out tea) Blimey! Already? I told ‘em that structural support was absolute rubbish! Did it go into the water then?
REGINALD: (Stunned pause) Well... yes. Metaphorically and literally, the spirit has departed the vessel.
ARTHUR: I don't know about spirits and vessels, mate, but I know about gravity. Was there anyone on it when she went?
REGINALD: (Wiping a tear) The entire nation was on it, in a sense. The weight of history.
ARTHUR: (Winces) Ooh, nasty. That’ll be a lot of claims, then. I told the Council the rivets were more rust than metal. I suppose you’ll be wanting us to fish the bits out?
REGINALD: (Confused) Fish the bits out? We are currently preparing the lying-in-state! The procession must be immaculate!
ARTHUR: Lying in state? You can’t leave it in the middle of the river, it’s a shipping hazard! And don't bother with a procession, you'll need a crane. A bloody big one.
REGINALD: (Offended) A crane? For the Monarch?! We shall use a gun carriage, pulled by one hundred and forty-two Royal Naval sailors!
ARTHUR: (Long silence) ...Right. I mean, it’s your budget, guv. Bit disrespectful to the sailors, though, innit? Dragging a pile of wet rubble through the streets of Westminster?
REGINALD: Rubble?! How dare you! This is the very foundation of our constitutional identity!
ARTHUR: Look, I liked the bridge too, it had a nice Victorian charm, but at the end of the day, it’s just stone and mortar, isn't it? We can have a new one up by Tuesday.
REGINALD: (Gasping) A... a new one? By Tuesday?
ARTHUR: Yeah. We’ve got a prefab one in the warehouse. It’s concrete, mind you. Doesn't have the "heritage" look, but it won't fall down just because a heavy bus drives over its nose.
REGINALD: (Incoherent with rage) Her Majesty... does not have... a concrete nose!
ARTHUR: Well, not anymore she doesn't! She's at the bottom of the Thames getting nibbled by eels! Now, do you want the quote for the salvage or am I wasting my tea break?
REGINALD: (Staring at the phone in horror) I... I believe I have the wrong number.
ARTHUR: And I believe you’ve got a very weird way of describing a civil engineering disaster. Cheers.
[SCENE END]

 

[pinball1970]

T.I.L. Fireball over Europe March 8th

 

[sbrothy]

I'm almost done reading the The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, an Indian-born American physician and oncologist which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. It's from 2011, so not exactly new, but apart from being pretty depressing, and even somewhat heavy although written for the layman, I learned a remarkable fact:

"During WWII Penicillin was completely used up so it was necessary to synthesize the drug from the urine of patients who had been treated with it."

Recycling Penicillin from Urine in Post-War Germany.

An incredible (and rather gross) thought.

 

[symbolipoint]

"During WWII Penicillin was completely used up so it was necessary to synthesize the drug from the urine of patients who had been treated with it."

Recycling Penicillin from Urine in Post-War Germany.

An incredibly (and rather gross) thought.

Why the hell not use other natural sources or methods, such as what lead to finding Penicillin initially?

 

[sbrothy]

Yes we have several types now but perhaps antibiotics was in it's infancy back then. I don't really know. I just thought it a remarkable fact.

 

[sbrothy]

and that's not even gross compared to how insulin was produced to start with!

 

[sbrothy]

Or Growth Hormone extracted from what I envisage as blended human cadaverous pituitary glands.

Neither nature nor medicine is pretty.

 

[BillTre]

"During WWII Penicillin was completely used up so it was necessary to synthesize the drug from the urine of patients who had been treated with it."

Recycling Penicillin from Urine in Post-War Germany.

An incredibly (and rather gross) thought.

That's pretty clever. A good use of recycling!

Why the hell not use other natural sources or methods, such as what lead to finding Penicillin initially?

Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by the Scottish physician Alexander Fleming as a crude extract of P. rubens.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-:02-6"><span>[</span>6<span>]</span></a> Fleming's student Cecil George Paine was the first to successfully use penicillin to treat eye infection (neonatal conjunctivitis) in 1930. The purified compound (penicillin F) was isolated in 1940 by a research team led by Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain at the University of Oxford. Fleming first used the purified penicillin to treat streptococcal meningitis in 1942.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-Fleming_1943_434–438-7"><span>[</span>7<span>]</span></a> The 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was shared by Chain, Fleming and Florey.

Penicillin was the first antibiotic. It was isolated from the fungi that made it (probably as a defense mechanism against bacteria). It took a while for it to be synthesized chemically.
It become widely used in WW2.

 

[sbrothy]

Indeed. But as always with a good thing it's overused. I seem to remember we now pump pigs full of it to keep them disease-free risking resistance in humans (Especially here in Denmark as it's one of our #1 exports. Bacon and butter.). But as you say we have lots of other types. No problem. *cough*

 

[sbrothy]

Indeed. But as always with a good thing it's overused. I seem to remember we now pump pigs full of it to keep them disease-free risking resistance in humans (Especially here in Denmark as it's one of our #1 exports. Bacon and butter.). But as you say we have lots of other types. No problem. *cough*

Wasn't it you, @Astronuc, talking about whether we were ready for Sars-Cov-3? Well, we'll see about that....

EDIT: And to take the fun out of it I just got out of a scrape with death due to a combination of COPD and flu.

EDIT2: To make it even more "funny" the doctor told me before I was admitted that the respirator wasn't gonna see use. Hardcore message.

 

[BillTre]

Or Growth Hormone extracted from what I envisage as blended human cadaverous pituitary glands.

It would be hard to get enough human pituitary glands. There are many purification steps with lots of losses at each step. Many of first isolated hormones were purified from staring material from slaughter houses. Parts (of slaughtered animals, like the pituitary gland (bottom of the brain) were not so in demand as food, but were available in very large quantities. Sufficient starting material is often an important factor in these procedures. I think of these as requiring biochemical quantities (like grams) as opposed to molecular biological quantities which can be very small (like milligrams).

 

[sbrothy]

Yeah, well they didn't start with humans. They started with cows and pigs as I remember. Tons of them.

 

[sbrothy]

Wasn't it you, @Astronuc, talking about whether we were ready for Sars-Cov-3? Well, we'll see about that....

EDIT: And to take the fun out of it I just got out of a scrape with death due to a combination of COPD and flu.

EDIT2: To make it even more "funny" the doctor told me before I was admitted that the respirator wasn't gonna see use. Hardcore message.

Oh, I meant "Life Support". Language ef-up. That's what we call it here. "On respirator" = "On Life-Support".

EDIT: Oh there: "artificial respiration".

 

[Hornbein]

Today I learned that the first electric piano was the Vive-tone in 1933.

 

[Hornbein]

Since 1991 Seven-Eleven has been Japanese-owned.

Convenience stores are everywhere in Japanese cities. Family Mart is #1, Seven-Eleven #2.

 

[Janus]

TIL that the Piper PA-38 Tomahawk, the plane that I took my initial flight lessons and solos in ( over 40 decades ago), is, on two separate lists, considered one of the ten most dangerous small single engine planes to fly.( to the point that it was sometimes referred to as the "Traumahawk".) And here I thought that my flight instructor wasn't being fully serious when he said that the Tomahawk was the best plane to learn to fly in, mainly because it was the hardest plane to learn to fly in.

 

[DaveC426913]

and that's not even gross compared to how insulin was produced to start with!

None of that comes close to (oral) fecal transplants. Thanks, I'll take death.

 

[sbrothy]

None of that comes close to (oral) fecal transplants. Thanks, I'll take death.

Oral?! That sounds truly disgusting! I'd heard of the rectal kind but oral.... *brrrrr*....

 

[Swamp Thing]

the plane that I took my initial flight lessons and solos in ( over 40 decades ago),

That long ago, it should have been Leonardo da Vinci's helicopter?

 

[Swamp Thing]

TIL about a company that, among other things, uses an enzyme that is produced by cancer cells to catalyze the production of industrial chemicals like hydrogen peroxide.

 

[DaveC426913]

TIL about a company that, among other things, uses an enzyme that is produced by cancer cells to catalyze the production of industrial chemicals like hydrogen peroxide.

Great. Just what we need - cancer cells discovering they produce something of value. Next thing, they'll want authorship rights on papers. We'll never get rid of them.

 

[BillTre]

Cancer cells are a convenience for people working with cultured cells (cells grown in labs outside of their normal bodies). They are a lot easier to grow and if kept in culture for a long time, they will be selected to grow better in those conditions. These things make them a good source some gene products.
Non-cancerous cell have a limited life span in culture (some number of cell divisions) and will have to be re-started from an animal.
Over time the cancer cell's genome will lose genes it required for its growth in culture.

 

[sbrothy]

Today I learned about the the intriguing yet horrifying history and science of the Buck v Bell court case, thanks to what is so far a very good book by Siddhartha Mukherjee -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gene:_An_Intimate_History

I can't remember if I already wrote this and I can't be bothered to search through all the posts since, but Siddharta Mukherjee is the author of the "Biography of Cancer" called "The Emperor of all Maladies" (which I'll admit was pretty heavy and depressive given the subject). So I'll have to go read your link again and this time pay more attention....

 

[Hornbein]

Cancer cells are a convenience for people working with cultured cells (cells grown in labs outside of their normal bodies). They are a lot easier to grow and if kept in culture for a long time, they will be selected to grow better in those conditions. These things make them a good source some gene products.
Non-cancerous cell have a limited life span in culture (some number of cell divisions) and will have to be re-started from an animal.
Over time the cancer cell's genome will lose genes it required for its growth in culture.

It's my understanding that most cancer cells have no staying power as cultures. The big exception are HeLa cells, cancer extracted from Henrietta Lacks in 1951. Their descendants dominate cell cultures. Mrs. Lacks' descendants in turn sued for this unauthorized use and recently have received several settlements.

 

[BillTre]

It's my understanding that most cancer cells have no staying power as cultures.

No.

The big exception are HeLa cells, cancer extracted from Henrietta Lacks in 1951.

Not an exception. There are many cases of cultured cancer cells like this. Their drawback is that their genome gets modified and becomes "weird".

Their descendants dominate cell cultures. Mrs. Lacks' descendants in turn sued for this unauthorized use and recently have received several settlements.

Yes.

 

[sbrothy]

No.

Not an exception. There are many cases of cultured cancer cells like this. Their drawback is that their genome gets modified and becomes "weird".

Yes.

I admit I'm not sure what you mean with "staying power" as I haven't followed the discusssion closely, but in the book I mentioned just above he talks about functionally immortal cancer cells still being used from long dead patients. Cells they can still grow in petri dishes 50 years after their deaths.

It's a truly "unnatural" "disease".

EDIT: It's an even bigger mystery to me why people become oncologists than OBGYNs or urologists. But I guess it's sometimes about a personal relation to a truly horrifying malady (to borrow Mukherjee's word.)