Morphine

What would a Sherlockian be if she did not choose to write about one of Holmes's substances of choice?

Derived from the opium poppy, the structure of morphine is given above. A benzene ring joins a cyclohexane ring, which in turn joins a cyclohexene ring, with various substituents: two hydroxide groups, an oxygen atom, and a nitrogen atom, bonded as shown above.

Addictive and numbing, morphine was central to the Opium Wars that broke down China's civilization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and one of its derivatives continues to be a problem. Morphine gets its name from the the Roman god of dreams, Morpheus, because it induces sleep. Its similar structure to codeine is not surprising, although the latter is much less addictive. The diacetyl derivative of morphine, however, is most certainly not known as such. Heroin is different only in the presence of hydroxide groups--they are replaced with CH3CO, as shown below.

Heroin was first produced when Bayer, the makers of aspirin, in an attempt to synthesize a less dangerous derivative of morphine--an attempt that, quite obviously, backfired.

The effect of morphine is produced by specific components of the molecule's structure, including the benzene ring, a quaternary carbon atom, and the a two-carbon chain bonded with a tertiary nitrogen atom. As a result, we have a substance that can bind to receptors in the brain and reduce the pain felt normally. This "morphine rule" applies to other compounds as well.

Climate Change and Food

According to a New York Times article from early this month, climate change is not just affecting polar bears and people on the coast. The world's food supply is threatened by the warming of the globe as well.

Crops are sensitive to heat waves trapped by the increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. According to the article, this could cause production of grown food to decrease by "as much as 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century." 

Evidently, everything that's currently being done to reduce these emissions is not enough to effectively prevent the reduction of food availability. However, no definitive solution is yet known, and so all that can be done is more of the same conservative tactics in the public and private sectors.

Charger of the Future

Scientists at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering have come up with a unique way to charge electronic devices: by using fiberglass and copper to capture various types of waves. An e! Science News article, found here, describes the apparatus invented by Allen Hawkes, Alexander Katko, and Steven Cummer as effective at converting microwaves into electrical power, doling out 7.3 volts to a typical cell phone charger's 5 volts.

Much like solar cells, the new power source converts energy from the atmosphere around it into usable electricity for small devices. And although microwaves have been tested, those involved in the development are confident that other forms of energy can be converted using these "metamaterials." In fact, WiFi signals can be better protected with ceilings coated in the stuff. Most mind-blowing and hopeful, however, is the idea that metamaterials could someday be built into phones, allowing them to "recharge wirelessly while not in use," a feat that one could say might lead to world peace--or at least, peace between Siri and her human.

If wireless signals and other waves can be used to charge a cell phone, what else can they do? Will we ever be able to fully unlock the potential of these waves? We've gone so far as to harness electricity from a wireless device, a device that literally pulls energy from thin air; who's to say we can't go further and power larger, more power-hungry appliances and electronics using metamaterial?

This is quite a step into the utopia of the smartphone era, where data's always free and phones charge themselves. We might have phones actually pulling off the latter fairly soon, if the reactions of those involved with the project are any indication of just how successful their creation works. A very large step in the direction of a perfect world is always exciting, and if that perfect world includes a WiFi-chargeable smartphone, then sign me up for the future.

The Peanut Butter Test

Alzheimer's disease, the infamous degeneration of the mind in many unfortunate individuals, has a new, slightly unorthodox test to confirm diagnosis in early stages.

According to Science Daily's article, graduate student Jennifer Stamps has come up with an effective "peanut butter test" useful for confirming Alzheimer's diagnosis. Upon noticing that patients' sense of smell was not tested at the practice she observed, she went about finding an inexpensive, effective way of testing the sense. Peanut butter is brought closer centimeter by centimeter to the patient's left nostril, then the same with the right, measuring the distance. In patients diagnosed with the beginnings of Alzheimer's, the left nostril is impaired.

Although it is by no means a cure or even a conventional method, but the peanut butter test proves useful in confirming diagnosis in a quick, cheap way with no invasive medical tests. It will no doubt be tweaked and perfected with use, but for now it is simply an amusing ray of sunshine in something as tragic as Alzheimer's disease.

The Real-Life Method

From an early age, over and over (at least, in my experience), students are taught that the "scientific method" consists of a set of specific steps which all experiments must adhere to:  question, research, hypothesis, experiment, observations, repeat. You get a vague explanation of what all that means. The question is supposed to come from something you notice, the research is to see what experiments other people have done, the hypothesis is your guess as to what will happen, and the rest is pretty self-explanatory.

However, as a nine-year-old kid you don't fully understand all that. You just do what the teacher tells you and long for high school science classes where you honestly believe you'll get to blow stuff up every day. Eventually you come to grasp that a "hypothesis" isn't just a guess, but an educated guess. You learn that scientists in real life question things that haven't been answered. And finally, you get that testing a theory doesn't have to follow the rules that have been burned into your brain since the fourth grade.

Dr. Wendy Burns of the Chemistry and Physics department at Bellarmine says that she doesn't necessarily use the method that we're taught, but that she uses her own form of it. After seeing Dr. Burns's description of her method, though, we can sort of see a similar pattern, as such:  get an idea of what to research, do the research in order to specify and perfect the question, and then design and perform an experiment, and of course, as all scientists are apt to do, observe and analyze the findings.

The real thing that's sort of surprising when you get older and start going into science classes that aren't simply a recap of what happened the year before is that scientists don't work alone. They depend on each other and the breakthroughs of the past so that they can make new discoveries and explain how the world works. The real-life method is Science = Teamwork. And that is a beautiful thing.

Tumblr's For Scientists, Too

After reading Adam Frank's essay "Welcome to the Age of Denial" in the New York Times, found here, I can't help but wonder why everything he says just strikes a nerve in me.

I suppose it has something to do with the presentation of his argument. Frank is a bit rude in his treatment of creationists, calling their belief system "silliness" and giving no second thought to their viewpoint. This is the opposite of open-minded, something all scientists should strive to be.

Deeper than his presentation, however, is the argument itself, full of transparent holes and little support from credibility. The very first paragraph's shocking statistics could have been pulled from thin air for all we know--and by the look of them, I would be inclined to think this is the case. In my personal experience, Americans today are skeptical of everything, religious ideas even more so than science. If the number of creationists in this country has increased by two percent over the past thirty years, I'll go without wi-fi. Seriously, if you prove that stat to me, I'll stay off of Tumblr for two whole days.

There's the rub, though; when Frank asserts that today's culture is "less engaged with science and technology" than in the past, one thing comes to my mind. What about all of those "science Twitter feeds and blogs" that exist, like this one? I can't tell you how many times I've come across a Tumblr post about the awesomeness of Carl Sagan or how "f***ing incredible" the cosmos is. (It's especially great when sci-fi fandoms bring real science into the picture, like with this particular post.) Pictures of nebulae and amazing insects and technologies blow our minds, and young people, at least the ones on Tumblr, eat all that up. To say that science in modern society is "broken and lost," as opposed to full of wonder, is simply a lie.

That's not to say that we don't sometimes need reminding of the amazing world we live in. This is one point on which Adam Frank and I can agree. Keeping science from the general populace is idiotic. The most prudent way to get people interested in science is to show them how their smartphones and medicines and cars work, not to mention cool discoveries like a planet where it rains glass.

I've rambled quite a bit here, and I'm gonna bring it to a close. But remember: just because science isn't in the forefront of politics, doesn't mean it's not important to American culture in the 2010s. Frank says that "science is a way of behaving in the world. It is, simply put, a tradition." As any young person of any era would probably say, traditions should change--and they will. That's probably the only real tradition that exists.

The Start of a New Science Blog

Alright, here goes nothing. I am now officially a college student.

This blog is for my liberal arts chemistry class. There'll be science stuff, that much is certain. I hope I won't just use it for class, though. It would be kind of cool to have another of my own blogs that's not related to fiction or fangirling in some way. So, without further ado, here it is. Thanks, Dr. Holt. This one's for you.