Archive for the 'Literature' Category

I’m sure you’ve all been there with some degree of regularity: You’re searching the literature for information related to a research project when the search engine spits out a paper with a really bizarre title.  Intrigued, you take a quick look at the abstract to see how that title could possibly describe an actual scientific study.

A search on ion gradients this weekend led me to an old study published in the journal Anesthesiology titled, “The Effects of Aspirated and Swallowed Water in Drowning: Sea-water and Fresh-water Experiments on Rats and Dogs.”

Check out the abstract:

Experiments involving lethal and nonlethal drowning were performed in rats and dogs to investigate the effects of aspirated and swallowed water on blood composition, scrum potassium increase owing to hemolysis, damage to pulmonary tissue, and whether blood composition continues to change after cardiac arrest. The ratios between aspirated and swallowed water amounted to 1:1 in fresh-water and 1:3 in sea-water drowning. The immediate effects on blood composition were mainly caused by aspirated water, whereas later effects probably were considerably influenced by swallowed water. A maximum of 33 per cent of the potassium increase in lethal drowning was due to hemolysis. Sea water produced more damage to pulmonary tissue than fresh water. After cardiac arrest, blood composition did not continue to change for at least three minutes.
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Source: Anesthesiology. 32(1):51-59, January 1970.

This paper stood out for two reasons.  First, I imagine that the experiments for this project must not have been very fun to do.  After the first two or three times, drowning dogs becomes boring.  Second, since I was using the Science Citation Index, it was distressing to see that in the 37 years since the publication of this paper, it has received zero citations. Nil. Nada. Zilch. Not a single freaking citation. I bet those rats and dogs are really happy about the contribution they made to science.

So what, Paul? You’re not one of those PETA whiners, are you?

No, far from it. I am an unabashed supporter of animal testing and find many types of animals to be delicious. Still, this particular study makes me wince. A pile of dead animals and no citations to show for it? I know citations aren’t the only way to measure the value of a scientific paper, so I hope someone learned something from this study.

If not, c’est la vie, I suppose.  You can’t win ‘em all.

The copyright for the above image is owned by Flickr user “soylentgreen23″. The image is used here under a Creative Commons-Attribution license. We do not wish to imply that the cuddly specimen of Canis lupus in the picture is being drowned or otherwise mistreated. — Management

I picked up an old issue of the New England Journal of Medicine and came across a couple of interesting picture stories. The first was on a serious HF accident (free access). The poor victim was cleaning an old facility used for glass etching when a pipe containing 70% HF burst on him. The treatment involved pumping Mg²⁺ and Ca²⁺ into his veins and arteries.  You can actually see the calcified precipitates on his skin. Yum: 

The second pict-o-story was based on a tub of fluorescent urine.  When admitted to the ER, the urinator was believed to have ingested anti-freeze.  The doctors noted that the patient’s pee fluoresced under UV light, and they concluded that this was probably the result of the anti-freeze’s being spiked with dye.  The wording of the paper made it seem like the doctors suspected the chromaphore was fluorescein, which is often added to anti-freeze to aid in the detection of radiator leaks.

The only problem is that the fluorescence was blue, not green, which is the color you’d expect from fluorescein.  Some other guys noticed the same thing and sent a letter to the editor, so who knows what’s going on?  In their defense, the doctors noted that there are plenty of opportunities for false negatives and false positives if this were to actually be used as a test for anti-freeze ingestion, so it appears the only reason this story was published was as an excuse to run a pretty picture of glowing urine.  I can respect that.

Lastly, I should add that both of the patients survived and apologize for ruining your appetites.

Move over, Bingel cyclopropanation… I’ve got a new favorite reaction.

While thumbing through a review article on the chemistry of some “extraordinary Maillard flavor compounds,” I came upon this little diddy:

Magnificent! While I don’t want to make a habit of encroaching on Milo’s territory of posting organic reaction mechanisms, you’ll find one after the jump. See if you can figure it out before peeking…

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