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Detoxing With Magnets for Fun and Profit
Ridgelift writes "Wired has an article on a new way to remove toxins from the bloodstream. The Argonne National Laboratory have designed nanoparticles which 'identify, and then latch onto, target molecules. The nanoparticles are injected into the bloodstream, where they circulate through the body, picking up their target toxins as they go. Once they have made their rounds, all that's needed to remove the particles from the body are a magnet housed in a handheld unit and a small, dual-channel shunt inserted into an arm or leg artery.'"
I, too had similar thoughts, but in order to not appear redundant in my post I decided to find out the particle size of a typical virus.
I found this at drgreene.com
Viruses range in size from 20 to 250 nanometers
The average bacterium is 1,000 nanometers long.
If a bacterium were my size, a typical virus particle would look like a tiny mouse-robot. If an average virus were my size, a bacterium would be the size of a dinosaur over ten stories tall.
It could be a scale thing taht means this first generation of magnetic detox devices are too large to pick up virus particles. i don't know what sort of % you would need to remove of a viral infection compared to a bacterial infection to ensure a recovery by the casualty, but suspect it would be a lot higher for a virus.
Another problem could lie in the changing nature of viruses, making them a harder target to select for when designing your magnetised particles.
It would be a wonderful application if it works.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
The iron in hemoglobin isn't magnetic, so this won't have any more effect on blood cells than the "improve your circulation" magnets do.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
From the article: "Small crystals of magnetite are added to the particles..." . Magnetite (Fe3O4) is magnetic because the 2 Fe+3 ions arranged with the Fe+2 ion in that specific configuration make for "magnetic domains", regions in the magnetite crystals where all the unpaired electrons are spinning the same way[0]. The iron in the hemoglobin in your blood is either Fe+2 or +3, no magnetic domains can exist because the hemoglobin molecules are floating around in solution and don't line up at all--no ferromagnetism. Even if you had a crystal of pure hemoglobin, it'd be paramagnetic (very weakly magnetic, like pure oxygen) or diamagnetic (no magnetic effects at all). You can see this for yourself by trying to pick up a drop of your own blood with a really strong horseshoe magnet.
[0] Well, not really, but the real explanation involves a lot of math and I can't remember it anyway.
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
The body would attack those things because they are foreign
Read the article, my friend - they're coated so they don't get recognised as antigens. Nor will they get stuck (they took care over this one, designed wuith reference to pore sizes), and in any case are biodegradable.
It's been a few years since I had to think about this, but I think that's an electric dipole moment, not a magnetic moment you're thinking of.
As I remember it, the 'V' shaped arrangement (H-O-H) of the atoms in the H2O molecule result in a slight misalignment of the electron clouds of the atoms, causing a small electric dipole moment capable of bonding other nearby similarly configured molecules into chains. It's responsible for the hydrogen bonding that gives water its viscosity.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
[I'm only about one or two Scientific American articles ahead of you, so let's hope that a real molecular biology geek shows up].
This is what antibodies are for. You need to make an antibody that has a very high specific affinity for the virus and a lower affinity for friendly cells. (Nature does this by generating large numbers of antibodies at random, then filtering out antibodies that show reactivity with your own cells. All the rest are let loose in the body).
Then you attach the magnetized tag on the other end of the antibody.
The antibody attaches to the virus in a death grip, and then the little black box can filter out the magnetized tag.
You don't have to remove 100% of the virus load to cure somebody. You just have to get a lot of the virus so that the body's natural immune system can fight the rest.
Indeed, other groups have tried the antibody idea with different payloads, such as a radioactive atom bonded onto the antibody. The antibody attaches to the virus or the cancer cell, then the radioactive atom decays right there next to the bad cell.
Hangovers are caused by your body being dehydrated. To fix the worst of the effect, drink lots of water (preferably the night before) or, if you happen to be an EMT, stick some saline solution right into your blood.
Not quite.
Hangovers are caused by your body producing acetaldehyde as it metabolizes alcohol. Dehydration does play a role, but it is a supporting role.
A good description of what happens, and good advice on what to do about it can be found here.
Alternatively, you can pick up the RU-21 pill designed by the KGB to keep their agents from getting hangovers.
The short of it is that atoms spin on an axis, and if you put atoms in a strong magnetic field, their spin axes will mostly line up. Adding a strong RF pulse will "tip" them in one direction (like tipping a spinning top) and they will precess while going back to alignment with the field. This precession can be picked up as a seperate RF emission, and the nature of the emission from each atom will be affected by what atoms are around it. It's the same concept as NMR, just that medical MRI looks for the specific signature of water, finding differences in tissue density.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
yes, nuclear magnetic resonance imaging does not look for iron but he said fMRI