Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
I want one of these
One of the things I like about my job is that I get to play with x-ray machines, and you can get interesting pictures of things using x-rays. I think x-rays always give an interesting perspective on the way things look.
This is what the insides of a Tungsten T3 look like with the slider opened. Click on the image for a larger version. I’ve annotated some of the more obvious bits that can be easily recognized. The rest are just components on the motherboard. If you look closely, you can even see the ribbon cables on the right side of the button pad and lying over the battery.
For those of you wanting the technical details on how I took the image, I used an 8″x10″ CR cassette, 40″ source-image distance, 80kVp 1.5mAs, small focal spot (0.3 mm) in a Siemens Axiom RF room. Tungsten T3 was placed on the cassette. Cassette was read on an Agfa ADC Compact+ CR reader using flat field processing.
Couldn’t resist taking this quiz, Yankee or Dixie. What came as a surprise was my result: 63% (Dixie). A definitive Southern score!
Considering where I’m from, definitely a surprise. But maybe not so much considering where I live now. I don’t know if I should be insulted, or troubled…
Found via anything but ordinary
Still at 170. Had a momentary lapse yesterday and strayed off my diet to satisfy a meat craving at Brinson’s Beef & Brew. Not a bad place. Tasty burgers. I had the Tower of Chili burger, which I thoroughly enjoyed half of. Saved the other half for dinner tonight. Also had the Cheese Fries, which was ok, but would have been better with a cheese sauce instead of regular melted cheese. Add a little gravy to it (which they don’t have), and mmmm, a plate of artery clogging goodness.
And now back to our regularly scheduled healthy eating.
Ok, this one is a little bit out of my field, but the topic intrigued me. Found the article through a posting at ScienceDaily.
I’m always a little bit sceptical about claims on the effects of EM fields on tissue and the brain in particular. Mostly because many of the studies that show an effect use conditions that the majority of people aren’t exposed to in real life for significant periods of time. And there really isn’t a lot of energy in low frequency EM radiation (in the radio wave and low frequency microwave end of the spectrum) to do much more than re-arrange electron configurations. Maybe that’s enough though. Who knows. It’s a lot like extrapolating the effects of low level and chronic radiation exposure when all you’ve got is data from high level and acute exposures.
The article (Lai H, Singh N P, “Magnetic Field-Induced DNA Strand Breaks in Brain Cells of the Rat“, Environ Health Perspect, publication pending, doi:10.1289/ehp.6355) has been accepted for publication, but hasn’t been published yet. The PDF of the pre-publication version of the article is available here for the time being.
Going to try to read this one over the weekend and see what interesting tidbits it contains.
Abstract:
In previous research, we found that rats acutely (2 hrs) exposed to a 60-Hz sinusoidal magnetic field at intensities of 0.1 – 0.5 mT showed increases in DNA single and double strand breaks in their brain cells. Further research showed that these effects could be blocked by pretreating the rats before exposure with the free radical scavengers melatonin and N-tert-butyl-α-phenylnitrone, suggesting the involvement of free radicals. In the present study, effects of magnetic field exposure on brain cell DNA in the rat were further investigated. We found that: (1) Exposure to a 60-Hz magnetic field at 0.01 mT for 24 hrs caused a significant increase in DNA single and double strand breaks. Prolonging the exposure to 48 hrs caused a larger increase. This indicates that the effect is cumulative. (2) Treatment with Trolox (a vitamin E analog) or 7-nitroindazole (a nitric oxide synthase inhibitor) blocked magnetic field-induced DNA strand breaks. These data further support a role of free radicals on the effects of magnetic fields. (3) Treatment with the iron-chelator deferiprone also blocked the effects of magnetic field on brain cell DNA, suggesting the involvement of iron. (4) Acute magnetic field exposure increased apoptosis and necrosis of brain cells in the rat. We hypothesize that exposure to a 60-Hz magnetic field initiates an iron-mediated process (e.g., the Fenton reaction) that increases free radical formation in brain cells, leading to DNA strand breaks and cell death. This hypothesis could have an important implication on the possible health effects associated with exposure to extremely-low frequency magnetic fields in the public and occupational environments.