It’s been remarkable to me how difficult it is to discuss topics if I add the stipulation that I want at least some scientific thinking behind what I am saying.
It just seems to take so long to get data, understand it, and then properly show how this data does actually apply to and support my point.
Anyway, I really felt I would just hold all the topics until I could work through a full data demonstration of the points involved, including Sketchup drawings and explanatory videos.
But the other day, I saw something in the local paper, and it just gave me the feeling that I should put up on the website just some preliminary thoughts on some of the topics that I am planning to cover.
With each topic, I will eventually get the Sketchup drawings made to more clearly show the issues. Usually I can get the videos produced too, but it all just takes more time than I ever thought it would. Oh well, so as they say…”Who knew?”
A few topics follow, I’ve given each topic its own page. When I can get more work done on each topic, I’ll just add it to that page.
So, a few notes below on some of the topics.
ICE CANNON
I really like Ice Cannon. Probably because it involves energy, power, things flying through the air, all that Y chromosome stuff. There is, of course, the idle rumination quality to it concerning…”Why wouldn’t this work?” One thing I can tell you, if you like disappearing down internet search engine rabbit holes, try to nail down the physical properties of ice, in the sense of using ice as a material for fabrication. Whew!
It could not be more clear that one could accelerate ice down a tube using compressed air. But try taking that on out to parameters beyond where most people tend to be. Can you power an air cannon with air at 1500 psi? Well, why not? Good luck trying to get any data on that setup. Can you accelerate ice, of course, well,…. just how much acceleration can ice take? Again, good luck finding any scientific data on that topic. What does ice do if it is inside a metal cylinder and the the interior of the cylinder is pressurized to 6000 psi? It looks to me like no one on the planet has ever done that. So if you make crystalline ice, run it down the tube and launch it into the air, could you put a spin on the ice? Of course you could, well…. how much spin can a block of ice take? Again, good luck seeing that data on any search engine.
But, just forgetting all those problems, just imagine going to the Pumkin’ Chunkin’, watching the human powered events, the slings, the rotary engines, the air cannons, and then, finally, going on down to the Ice Cannon, and watch it put a 28 inch long, 50 pound weight, bullet-shaped piece of ice 4600 feet downrange. WOW. Particularly if you watched that block of ice hit something, preferably a moving target to boot. My thought is ….just WOW, I would like to watch that. Even if it never got on a boat or had any meaningful use of any type, just the idea of being there to watch that, and of course, they would fire up that chiller, then the compressor, then the controllers, then fire off a round every 20 seconds…. again, I just say WOW!
KIDNEY PRESERVATION
It has always been so sad to me that tissue for transplantation has such a fleeting and precarious existence as it transits from being available for transplantation to being actually transplanted. Tissue for transplantation is so valuable and can eliminate such suffering, that it just seems unfair somehow that it can be lost or damaged so easily. It turns out that oxygenating living human tissue is the significant problem in preserving material for transplantation (at least organs, anyway), mostly because the oxygenation function occurs via fluid flow (blood) moving through very, very small tubing type channels. Human organs are not going to be adequately oxygenated simply by having some oxygen around, it needs to be pushed deep into the organs in an ongoing manner, and it has to be pushed using the structures already present, in a manner where none of their acceptable normal operating parameters are exceeded. Whew! That’s a set of daunting requirements. It just occurred to me that perhaps we are not “seeing” this requirement list in the manner that we should. So why do we have to create some “new” way to push oxygen to the tissues of these organs? And why do we have to create, monitor, and have on-going real-time adjustments of the fluids bathing these organs for transplantation? The interesting thing about human blood if one looks at the physiology of blood, is that blood exists as a material that can move oxygen around in a manner that escapes the diffusion limits of normal atmospheric oxygen partial pressures for oxygen dissolved into water. This is essential to mammalian life on this planet, but why did we concede that we need to use this system for organ transplantation? There is no rule that we have to do that. I could remember from physical science, and from diving science, that gas carrying capacities of fluids involves the solubilities of the gases in the fluids and also the partial pressure of the gases. Hey, so let’s have a pure oxygen environment, that increases the partial pressure of oxygen in the fluid by fivefold. Let’s run the pressure up, what would happen? If we held the pressure to 2 atmospheres, with a pure oxygen environment, then an interesting event occurs. If one just looks at the amount of dissolved oxygen in the fluid using simply milligrams of oxygen per milligrams of fluid, well….. water in a 100% oxygen environment, at a pressure of 2 atmospheres, this water will have as much oxygen per ml of volume as does blood. It’s a little more complicated than that, in that the water does not actually carry as much oxygen per ml as does blood, but the oxygen in the water is at 1500mm Hg (2 atmospheres), and the tissue needing the oxygen that “sees” this water, this tissue has an oxygen concentration of about 20mm Hg. In humans, breathing air at sea level, the diffusion driving pressure between the oxygenated blood and the metabolizing tissue is about an oxygen partial pressure of 80mm Hg in the blood vs 20mm Hg in the tissue. This differential is what drives the blood to release its oxygen to the tissues. In the water-0nly, non-blood environment that I am describing, the water has oxygen at 1500mm Hg and this water is “seeing” metabolizing tissue fluids with partial pressures of oxygen again of about 20mm Hg. So the pressure differential driving the release of oxygen from the fluid to the tissues is 1500 minus 20, or a differential of 1480mm Hg. This compares to the differential in the blood-tissue system of 80mm Hg minus 20mm Hg, a differential of only 60mmHg .
“Gads”, you may say, “Where in the world is he going with this?”
What it means is that essentially water (or a water fluid with normal physiologic values of ions, proteins, sugars, pH, osmolality, etc.) has the same molar transport capacity for oxygen per ml of fluid as does blood, with the proviso that we are comparing blood at sea level against physiologically balanced water solution where this water solution is maintained in an atmosphere which is 100% oxygen at a pressure of 2 atmospheres.
This means we could pump this water solution through an organ for transplantation (for example, a kidney) directly into the already present tubing system of the kidney (its blood vessels), and we would have no requirement to pump this fluid any more faster than blood would normally flow or at a pressure any more higher than normal blood pressure. If we did this, the molar delivery of oxygen as mg oxygen per ml of fluid per min of flow would be the same number as would occur if blood was the fluid flowing through the kidney.
“But where are you going to get this perfectly balanced out, ionically proper, pH balanced, completely non-injurious fluid that you’re gonna’ pump full of oxygen and run through this kidney?” you might wonder.
Remember, I was wondering earlier, “Why are we obligated to create, monitor, and supply this proper fluid for perfusion?” We can get as much of this fluid as we need from another completely adequate source. Why not just use the dialysate fluid from persons on dialysis for kidney failure? That dialysate, while not physiologically absolutely perfect, is very well suited for ongoing perfusion of human tissue, since that is what it is doing in the person on dialysis.
So the person on dialysis gets repetitively “hooked up” to the kidney, and “tunes up” the physiological environment that is bathing and perfusing the kidney, while, at the same time, the kidney (which is a perfectly functional kidney, by the way), well….the kidney runs its metabolic machinery and “tunes up” the dialysis patient’s fluids (removes physiologic wastes by making an output of urine). Cool stuff. It’s sort of like a pregnancy, in that the human “connects up” to the kidney and supplies it with its metabolic needs, like a mother does to her baby via the placenta, it’s just that the dialysis patient (I think) would not need to be constantly attached to provide physiologic perfusion fluid to the kidney. My feeling is they could “hook up” to the kidney about 3 days a week, on their normal dialysis regimen.
“Ok, so say this works, what is the point of it?” you could say.
The hypothesis of this setup is that the dialysis membranes would prevent the immune system of the dialysis patient from sending any injurious cells or materials against the kidney for transplantation. In addition, the fluid perfusing the kidney would be sent back into the blood stream of the dialysis patient. This would represent an antigen “flood” to the dialysis patient’s immune system from the cells of the donor kidney. The hope is that, over time, tolerance would be induced, and when the labs showed the dialysis patient’s immune system no longer “cared about” the donor kidney, well…. we just transplant the donor kidney into the dialysis patient and everybody lives happily thereafter.
In my thinking, even the faint possibility that this would work, makes it worth investigating.
Anyway, that’s KIDNEY PRESERVATION
CONCUSSION
I have never understood why concussion is not treated for what it is. Concussion (this is the football player related concussion) is no more than exposure to an environmental toxin. Throughout the industrial setting (at least in America) the measurement, handling, management, and sanctioning actions related to hazardous materials or toxic environments is a well-understood, robust, and functional process.
Concussion is no more than an environmental hazard or toxin of acceleration-deceleration stress to the human head.
Why can’t we just treat concussion like we do so many other work-related exposure settings for potentially hazardous toxins or environments?
Anyway, that’s CONCUSSION
More to follow as I get time. pg