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Buckyballs Kill Fish
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post (free registration, not too invasive) has a disturbing article on a new study of the environmental dangers of nanotech. Buckyballs caused "severe" brain damage in largemouth bass when added to their aquariums in concentrations of 0.5 ppm, a concentration level on par with common US pollutants. They also caused die-offs of Daphnia, waterfleas that are a crucial part of the ocean food chain. "The new findings are somewhat surprising because many scientists had predicted that buckyballs would not linger in water but would quickly form clumps and sink." The findings have yet to be peer-reviewed."
Well, we're all going to die anyway.
But, if I had my choice in the matter, I'd want to die by the hands of something cool enough to be named buckyballs.
Imagine the death certificate. CAUSE: Buckyballs.
Imagine the eulogy. "It's so sad that he was taken from us so soon by buckyballs..."
Yeah, so, you still don't want buckyballs to kill you?
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
I never heard about it. Some US thing no doubt. Help me out here!
The buckyballs aren't getting into the fish and casuing brain damage, this is all a coverup for the escape of a very dangerous nanotechnology. Millions of nanobots are playing dodgeball with these buckyballs...sometimes the fish get in the way, and BAM, brain damage.
"Because of the novel arrangements of the atoms in these molecules -- and because the laws of physics behave differently at such scales -- nanoparticles display bizarre chemical properties."
The laws of physics do not behave differently on a HUGE carbon 60 molecule! The article fails to show what the buckyballs do to the fish or aquatic fleas. Does anyone have insight?
120 chars of filth!
Blueballs kill geeks, so I'm not feeling real sorry for the fish at this time.
Just another day in Paradise
It makes me think about the time I lived in Virgina near the Appomattox River. The charming Allied Signal were developing Kepone, but after discovering it caused nerve damage to humans dumped it in the river. It remains today part of the muck... so toxic they won't consider dredging it.
I'm sure there are other examples of toxic waste which was assumed to be safe when it just became part of the muck... it just scares me that this is the logic used in may cases.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I knew it,
Soccer rots your brain.
A witty
From what I have read buckyballs have really neat conductive and structural properties. The article fails to state that there have been no commercially viable applications for the molecules. As long as that is true the fishes have little to worry about.
120 chars of filth!
I'm curious to find what other carbon nano-arrangements will do to sea life (or other life for that matter). What about carbon tubes? These appear to have numerous useful applications in superstrong carbon fibers. If we build a space elevator with carbon tubes, and the cable breaks, we can expect a whole lot of this carbon stuff to end up in the ocean. I remember that earlier experiments showed that carbon tubes did not pose an environmental risk, but I've never read what these experiments actually entailed.
:) I do not want to register, and adding the 'partner' thing to the URL somehow doesn't work for me.
And no, I didn't read the article
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
By the power of Google:
3 14 03-2004Mar28.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A
Enjoy!
... Zodiac by Neal Stephenson?
Some of the fish died, others heavily mutated. Here's a picture of the mutated fish.
Underholdning.info
Bucky's, of course.
the coroner performing the autopsy as Elmer Fud,
but with a really bad stutter,
dictating the procedure into a recorder.
Who's Bucky?
When buckyballs "steal" electrons, the buckyballs are reduced and whatever lost the electrons is oxidized.
Whenever something is oxidized, something else is reduced and vice versa.
Things that are easily reduced are good oxidizing agents; things that are easily oxidized are good reducing agents.
Despite the name, oxidation does not necessarily (or usually) involve oxygen; it refers to the change in oxidation number, and the term is just a vestige of a time when chemistry was less well understood.
I figure it's some guy's name. Some guy named Bucky.
The word "nanotechnology" spans two competely different fields: nanomachines and nanomaterials.
Nanomaterials is what this article is about. The whole field of nanomaterials is exploitng the fact that extremely small particles of materials show physico-chemical behaviour different from that shown at larger scales. Not that the laws of pysics change as some people have said, but that tiny size has an effect upon which laws manifest. Some of those changes are useful - which is why people are researching them. Some are, surprise surprise, dangerous. You get that with any new invention - fire destroys as well as warms.
Nanomaterials are here, now. We need to worry about them like any other new chemical (which, in a way, is what they are - on the boundaries of chemistry and materials physics). But not more. Of course they should be tested - and guess what, they are, as this article shows. No more (or less) of a risk than any of the hundreds of new chemicals which emerge every year. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
Nanomachines are a totally different question. Nanomachines are extremely tiny machines build up either from molecules, or by using silicon engineering developed for microchips to machine silicon (actually two very different technologies lumped together, but so be it). Apart from a few very crude devices, nanomachines are still a long way from any serious production.
People have hypothesized that it might be possible to build self-replicating nanomachines, and that such self-replicationg nanomachines might replicate so fast as to take over the world and reduce it to "grey goo". While you cannot say that this is absolutely impossible, it is very, very far ahead of anything even dreamed off. While a few useful widgets might emerge in the next few years, such gadgets are orders of magnitude away from anything presenting a serious risk to people at large.
(And, actually, I believe we already have self-replicating nanomachines: they are called viruses).
But, because of the confusion of the two terminologies, people are saying "Panic about what nanomachines might do because nanomaterials are here now".
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
A way to create my ill tempered mutated sea bass!
At last, we have found a way to make Billy largemouth bass fish shut up for good...
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
'Do you have Buckyballs?' 'No, it's just the way I walk.'
Bucky Fuller, inventor, philosopher and more. Created the original "SimCity" type game called the world game so that people could understand resources and global dynamics. US stamp with his head as a dome to be released in July.
Please remember that we are composed primarily of organic compounds... we react in a serious way to molecular carbon. All life on the planet reacts in a serious way to molecular carbon.
Carbon fibers, can and do penetrate cell walls. It's already been discovered that incredibly small concentrations of buckytube carbon fibers, can cause tremendous and unexpectedly servere lung damage, and that those bucky tubes quickly begin dispersing through the other tissues in the body with potentially serious and unpredictable impacts.
Buckyballs can transport metal ions into places metal ions normally can't go in our bodies. Buckyballs can pass easily through the blood brain barrier, and there's no information yet on their impact to neural, blood, or critical organ tissues.
Seeing as nature decided to use carbon as it's primary source of nanotech, and that we are almost certainly going to do the same, we would be wise to make sure that our creations are minimally compatible, and interoperable to the existing machines. To not take these issues into consideration, is to risk unprecedented damage to our environment, and ourselves.
Genda
I tried feeding one to the Seaman that lives on my dreamcast. No good. The %*()# thing still complains. I thought this was supposed to 'mellow him out or something.
Death would also be good. I hate that fish.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
...the mechanism they use to clump up is to bond with organic compounds, particularly fish brains.
The Washington Post (free registration, not too invasive)
The problem I have with the Washington Post registration is that their cookies are coming from some other domain than washingtonpost.com.
I've noticed this because I can allow washingtonpost.com but it still tells me to turn on cookies and won't allow me to register.
Found this http://www.southwestern.edu/~burksr/burksresearch. htm
while searching for information on Daphnia. Neat stuff. I wonder if Dr. Burks knows about these buckyballs? Interesting that the behavior of the Daphnia is different in the States than in Denmark.
thinking buckyballs were some new kind of superlure for fishing :-/
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
Well on the plus side they found this out before they started making a ton of products that use it. Compared to the 50's where you had commercials like "DDT it is good for you and it is good for me" (But not good for birds) and many other chemicals that got applications then found to be dangerous. At least now scientist are putting more research for in checking for safety then just assuming that something else will happen. Humility and good science works well together.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It should be noted that buckyballs were added to aquarium water with fish already in it, and damage was assessed after 48 hours.
Even a reasonably high level of toxicity might not be a major problem if the buckyballs are not persistent in a real-world environment. This is sort of like the short--half-life radioisotopes. They are more toxic precisely because they decay more rapidly, but if they have a half-life of a few days or less, disposal is simply a matter of letting them sit for a while.
The mechanism of effect needs to be determined to assess whether eating contaminated fish would have bad biological repercussions. If buckyballs are just really good oxidizing agents after being broken biologically, the residual effects would be minimal. If, on the other hand, the buckyballs are somehow acting catalytically or as immunological irritants, bioaccumulation could be likely and there would be a threat to humans from eating contaminated fish.
Unfortunately, there is precedent(bottom of page 7 of the PDF) for fullerenes acting as catalysts.
However, the paper linked to above also notes, "Fullerenes are also effective at mopping up free radicals, which damage living tissue. This has led to the suggestion that they might protect the skin in cosmetics, or help hinder neural damage caused by radicals in certain diseases, research on which in rats has already shown promise."[emphasis added] (page 9)
But then the same paper mentions that the size is similar to biologically active molecules, and has an affinity to an active site on an enzyme important to HIV.
It seems a thorough, well-designed toxicology study of fullerenes is in order. It is important that a study of the toxicity be done with conditions reasonably close to real world conditions.
I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
Buckyballs are large, inflatable substitutes for banisters and cheese-boards. Traditionally carved out of frozen nougat, they are known to cause jealousy in lab rats.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
I guess I never really thought about it.
Take a big bar of iron. Not remarkable. You can hit it with a blowtorch, beat on it, toss it in a bucket of water, and have some fun. Make it into a pile of iron powder, and watch the fireworks as you blow it through a candle flame.
You'd think our various encounters with such changes in surface area, and materials experiments, such as asbestos?, would have rubbed a little caution off on us.
Given their size, and nature one might well have just assumed they'd be very toxic to some creatures.
Even a reasonably high level of toxicity might not be a major problem if the buckyballs are not persistent in a real-world environment.
This is the problem that the article alluded to.
The buckyballs were not attracted to one another and did not "clump up" and sink. Rather they remained afloat and the fish became exposed.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Not salt water, they have nothign to do with the oceans ecosystem. I guess they just pulled protozoa form the air to get us whipped into a frenzy about. Did Jason Blair write this article?
I remember hearing somewhere that the black exhaust you typically get from a diesel truck as it goes through the first few gears after a dead stop is composed mostly of incomplete fullerines.
... Where it clearly states:
Do not taunt happy fun ball.
Heh heh. Too funny.
Lipids are a good portion of ALL tissue. Cell membranes are made primarilly of phospholipids (a nifty little molecule that forms walls due to its polar nature). Without lipids, there'd be nothing to hold your cells together, so you'd just be a puddle of cytoplasm (which would, like, suck).
So having buckyballs in your head, randomly destroying brain cell membranes would be a very bad th... Ooh! Look! A FISHY!!
Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball!
> Buckballs are not molecular carbon. One would wonder the
> health problems induced by graphite pencils or diamonds!
You're wrong.
From here...
Fullerenes, or buckminsterfullerenes in full, are molecules composed entirely of carbon, taking the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, tube or ring.
Fullerenes are similar in structure to graphite, which is composed of a sheet of linked hexagonal rings, but they contain pentagonal (or sometimes heptagonal) rings that prevent the sheet from being planar. They are sometimes jocularly called buckyballs or buckytubes, depending on the shape.
Shouldn't that be superconductivity at (relatively) high temperatures? Just about everything superconducts at low temperatures.
Do not taunt aqueous buckyball!!
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Maybe if the nanoparticles were even smaller, they would just pass right through the aquatica and not hurt them.
Well, the structure and shape of things at these scales sometimes has an effect. Any one of a thousand possibilities. [diatomaceous earth] ... nothing really poisonous about the substance chemically, but the nanoscale fractured edges will cut into the insects and draw out moisture, killing them. ... an example of how the shape or structure of something can change its effect.
Another example: say you had a thousand lumps of metal. If you form them into cubes and throw them on the ground, they can be walked over relatively easily. If you form them into balls, it may be difficult to walk over them without stumbling. If you form them into caltrops, walking on them will cause injury. These properties are all independent of the raw effect of the metal itself.
Good points. Another example:
Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow, CJD, etc.) is caused by deformed proteins (according to the prevailing, although hotly debated, "prion" theory).
Chemically, prions are "just proteins" -- but structurally, they're fucked up in some way which spreads the deformation to adjacent normal proteins.
-kgj
-kgj
OP comes from New Scientist, picked up by the Washington Post.
Check it out w/o registering:http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99
according to quantum mechanics, you're wrong.
Buckyballs have been shown to form diffraction patterns in slit experiments, see:
"Wave-particle duality of C60"
Markus Arndt , Olaf Nairz, Julian Voss-Andreae, Claudia Keller, Gerbrand van der Zouw,
and Anton Zeilinger
Nature 401, 680-682, 14.October 1999
This study was not needed.
The science is settled.
The consensus in the scientific world already decided that buckyballs sink.
Because the study has not yet been examined by peers in the scientific world, this can not be happening.
Scientists already decided buckyballs are safe.
There is no need to expend the effort in getting some of this "water" material and actually test it.
Because the results of buckyballs in water are already known, something must be wrong with this experiment.
Science is always right, this must be part of a smear campaign organized by opponents to science.
Obviously, the fish must have conspired to try to show science is wrong.
The fish must have pretended to have brain damage or caused the damage as part of the plot.
Stupid fish.
The buckyball can withstand slamming into a stainless steel plate at 15,000 mph, merely bouncing back, unharmed.
Hmmm... you don't see any commercial potential here?
Oh my god! Not only the fish mutated, the kid too! He is yellow and has a spikey cranium!
Wait a minute... Do'h!
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
I could have sworn I read someplace that there's a huge problem in the Hudson due to a GE transformer operation. Tons of PCBs in the riverbottom that GE says should be left alone so as to not stir them up.
NA-NOBUG!
based on the new state-of-the-art nanotechnology
Brain damage is usually caused by oxygen starvation. Could the buckyballs be absorbing the oxygen from the bloodstream?
The biggest and quickkest damage doesn't come from the oxygen starvation itself, but by the return of blood flow.
Brain cells metabolism is oxygen based and produces lots of free radicals - toxic by-products that are produced by oxagen metabolism. Normally that isn't a problem for our cells, because they also have the tools to control free-radicals production and degradation (with help of anti-oxydizer and well controlled reactions...)
When blood flow is cut, cells are suffering from the lack of oxygen but are still managing to survive for a short period in some way (brain cells aren't as good at fermentation....)
During this period they may undergo some damage but are still viable (DNA and basic protein synthesis tools may be still intact). The problem is : part of this damage can happen on metabolic tools that are intended to control free-radicals. During this period, it doesn't matter, because as the cell doesn't recieve oxygen, it doesn't produce free radicals
The problems arises when blood flow comes back : some cell (the less damaged from the lack of blood) survive, some other, although viable get killed because oxygen metabolism restarts and free-radicals are produced again... but the cells aren't able to cope with them anymore !
This phenomenon is called Reperfusion Damage, and lot of research is currently done to find way to minimise it (example : using anti-oxidizers).
[HINT : google this keywords for more information on the subjet]
To get back to the main subjet : as this buckyballs are known to be good oxidiser, it's very probable that their oxydizing propreties are exceeding brain's capacity of handling free radicals
other typical damage of free radicals : cataract (I wonder if they found it too on the fishes ?)
other tissus like muscles are less prone to free-radical damage, because it's easier for them to divide and replace damaged cells with new clean one.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I think there might have been a post along this line in regards to nanotubes, and a portion of this link has some information on conflicting research on health risks. Given the nightmare that asbestos turned out to be, it seems to me (a big supporter of science and technology) that we need a 'go slow' approach with this stuff. There is no earth shattering compelling need for anything made of nanotubes or buckyballs today that can't wait a few years for accurate and conclusive testing.
Then don't post the story. It is no better than a couple of guys talking out their asses on a corner (Just like Slashdot, nicht wahr?), until it has hit a journal. Until then, who fucking cares.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
New invention has far reaching environmental impact we don't understand.
This has *never* happened before!
" Speak for yourself. I wuld rather NOT die of brain-damage"
Well, you've got the brain damage part taken care of...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
There's a smallmouth bass in a lake in N NJ who's smarter than I am. Damn thing took more than a dozen mealworms off my hook trying a half dozen different techniques to snag him. Was going to try dynamite, but buckeyballs seem less likely to annoy the cops.
i hate to sound anal about this, but what does buckminsterfullerene have to do with nanotechnology? i realize they could be used for nanotechnology, but C60 is just a big molecule. there's no nanotech involved in making fullerenes; you can build a carbon arc in your garage if you want to have them. no microscopic manipulation required. you separate them out.... using a solvent. this isn't nanotech, it's chemistry. whoever wrote this article should think before using buzzwords.
also, interestingly, it should be noted that the toxicity of fullerenes isn't a surprise; when richard smalley and company came up with the fullerene structure in the mid-80's, everyone assumed they were toxic (the molecules, not the scientists). most chemicals with a benzene ring (benzene, toluene, PAHs) are pretty nasty stuff; a buckminsterfullerene molecule has 20 benzene rings in it. it would be a miracle if it weren't toxic.
so anyway, in this article, a group of scientists used well-established chemistry techniques to create an aromatic carbon molecule, and showed that it's toxic. why is this news?
There are some more details here on the mecahnism of the buckyball action.
9 99 94825
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns
They found it to be moderately toxic, and to cause damage known as lipid peroxidation. This can impair the normal functioning of cell membranes and has been linked to illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease in humans. They also referred to other studies of both fullerenes and nanotubes causing lung damage.
Imagine the sorts of microscopic tools you could create with that kind of technology. You could make probes and scalpels so small and precise you could do surgery on a cellular level.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
How does someone diagnose "severe brain damage" in bass? Do they flop in a flamenco rhythm when pulled out of water? Do they play hooky from the rest of the school?
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I'm not a chemist, just asking stupid questions. From what I've read, C60 is the most stable form of Buckyball, but yet it's works as an oxidizing agent. Do they tend to attract to other Buckyballs or more often to other elements?
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
I thought Kepone was a band?
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
I have a 70 gal aquarium indoors and a 3800 gal "aquarium" outdoor, and when someone tells me that they are keeping large-mouth bass in a 10 L aquarium and the fish suffered brain damage with-in 48 hours my first thought is what did you expect? and how did you keep the control group so healthy?.
I'm hoping that these guys research is totaly wacked because fullerenes aren't that hard to make and if they are realy that toxic, the implications are a bit staggering given the amount of genocidal activity in the world today.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Aren't viruses fulleresque? They kill fish, and others, too. As long as the second law of thermodynamics is in effect, we must assume anything we manufacture, however worthwhile, is disruptive, unless we learn otherwise.
--
make install -not war
I'm totaly cluesless here, it sounds like its some kids toy?
Dumping toxic compounds into ecosystems is stupid, even if the compound in question doesn't directly damage humans. Remember, we live on this planet, in the biosphere, not separate from it. Functioning ecosystems are A Very Good Thing. Taking out major components of functioning ecosystems (if that really is a risk with fullerenes) is not so good.
Bah! It's not the buckyball's fault...
I blame heavy drinking.
Anonymous sniping Coward, stop stalkdotting me. I swat AC twits with actual content in other threads, and you hope to land a zinger in some OT thread? Silly AC, flames are for wars.
--
make install -not war
(free registration, not too invasive)
Nothing like when your b/f sticks it to you, huh?
Copy the text out and post it here - if you have any DICK, which we feel is most unlikely.
I and others will refuse to comment in these 'not too invasive' threads until the cocksuckers responsible for them dry up and go away permanently.
Get a clue, you too Hemos.
The DDT ban is mostly due to junk science.
Then don't add to the noise by reporting them here. This is supposed to be stuff that matters not random FUD.
Sorry, but am I the only person in the world that doesn't know what a 'buckyball' is ?
What the hell are you talking about ?
I know what nono technology is all about, but 'buckyballs' ????
The article does not mention that buckyballs are present in soot, and are already in the environment. What is the present level of buckyballs outdoors? What is it after natural wildfires?
welcome to slashdot newcomer.
in faq 279, section 33, sub-paragraph 14, reference line 5:
"All frist psots will be modded down"
subprovision to line 5:
"All posts defending fsrit sopts will be modded down"
Obviously the air being loaded with buckyballs made dinosaurs too stupid to live. Well, we don't know the effects of buckyballs in the air. I propose they be tested on dinosaurs immediately!
I've worked with fullerenes before. The techniques used to separate and purify them involve a whole bunch of really nasty organic chemicals. I remember one jar that had a label warning that exposure to the chemical inside could result in sterilization. Nice!
My point is: given that even trace amounts of the chemicals used in processing are known to cause biological damage, how can we know from this study that the damage was caused by bucky balls? It seems to me that other chemicals are more likely to have caused the damage. Pointing the finger at bucky balls appears to be jumping to an unjustified conclusion.
The Washington Post article was poor in its scientific description of the study. Why couldn't they have published in Nature or something?!
I'd consider 48 hours still pretty short-term. Also, I would consider it cold comfort if the buckyballs didn't decompose but accumulated the sediment. Well, maybe buckyballs need the equivalent of condensation nuclei to quickly precipitate. I didn't see a detailed experimental procedure when I read the article, but it wouldn't be surprising if the water was relatively clean when the buckyballs were added. It would be ironic if it were simply too clean, and buckyballs didn't pose much of a threat in dirtier water.
Alternately, if the buckyballs are toxic because of oxidative power, perhaps in dirtier water they would be reduced to harmless byproducts by oxidizing material in the water.
However, these are just possibilities, and the prospect of buckyballs acting as biologically-active catalysts is a bit disturbing. I'm starting graduate study in physical chemistry this fall, so I hope to read more extensive toxicity studies before I decide what research area to pursue.
If I remember correctly buckyballs are a byproduct of combustion and are found in soot.
So if you drop your ashtray in the fishtank you've got dainbramaged fish...
Geez
Of course, we all know from the cool CG pictures what buckyballs/tubes look like as molecules, but what does the stuff look like to the naked eye, e.g. in a test tube? Is it a vapor, or does C60 form into a gray "buckygoo," or does it exist as a powder or solid? Anyone have pictures of that?
and the second says:
Which answers your question. Strange as it may be to think that scientists who study toxicity would have an understanding of its relative nature which rivals even your own.
"The findings have yet to be peer reviewed" In other words, this means nothing. Yet.
(Sorry to respond to my-self, I just wanted to point some more intersting data).
Free Radical, beside attacking brain-cells and being produced by oxygen metabolism, have another (smaller) role : .
they attract white cells (which are responsible for imunity). This phenomenon is called chemotaxis
This is logical, because most of the time, excess free-radicals are created by other white cell because some of them (macrophages & mast cells) use them to destroy foreign body (bacteria). And even if the free radicals aren't endogenous, there's chance that they will do damage to the tissue (see parent) so there's chance that the white cells will be useful to come and clean (eat) the mess.
The problem arises when very high doses of free radicals are produced. This will attract way to much white cells, and they'll start to over do.
Abnormal immunological responses are likely to happen (similar to what happens in case of Allergy , or Auto-immune disease). And as more white cells are doing bad job, they'll attract more other cells.
And that's interesting because the article mentions that part of the damage were done directly by done by the buckyballs, but part was done by the immune system of the fishes. So this can add to the hypothesis that the effect of the buckyballs can be (partially) explained by their oxidizing propreties.
I wonder what are the effect of buckyball, when simultaneously given with antioxydant
If that way they do less/little/no damage, it's a good proof of the role played by the oxidizing ability.
Other exemples of disease that include dammage done by the immune reaction to a synthetic substance (altough NOT always free-radical metiated) : Abestosis and some forms of Granulomas
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Great... It's going to take forever cleaning those pubes out from the filter.
Don't bucyballs break down in UV light? If so, just make that ozone hole bigger. Problem solved:P
My buttcheeks flap when I fart real hard...
It's important to keep in mind that C60 and other fullerenes are a common component of soot. Obviously, the long term environemtnal health implications of fullerenes can't be too bad or we'd all be dead right now. OTOH, fulerenes might be the reason the that soot is carcinogenic and not terribly healthy to be in prolonged contact with.
So what? I honestly don't see why anyone is surprised to learn that there is a number X at which buckyballs harm fish. The article seems to put forth the idea that 0.5 ppm is particularly significant because it's "a concentration level on par with common US pollutants." This is just foolish. This just means that the regulations for buckyball emissions into the environment need to be set at some safer number, below 0.5 ppm. EVERYTHING kills fish at concentrations that are high enough, including water, which must be "diluted" with oxygen in order for them to survive.
Currently hooked on AMP
Without lipids, there'd be nothing to hold your cells together, so you'd just be a puddle of cytoplasm (which would, like, suck).
....
Indeed! And we're damned lucky that oil and water don't mix -- if they did, we would dissolve in ourselves
-kgj
-kgj
BEDEMIR: Does wood sink in water?
VILLAGER #1: No, no.
VILLAGER #2: It floats! It floats!
VILLAGER #1: Throw the Buckball into the pond!
CROWD: The pond!
BEDEMIR: What also floats in water?
VILLAGER #1: Bread!
VILLAGER #2: Apples!
VILLAGER #3: Very small rocks!
VILLAGER #1: Cider!
VILLAGER #2: Great gravy!
VILLAGER #1: Cherries!
VILLAGER #2: Mud!
VILLAGER #3: Churches -- churches!
VILLAGER #2: Lead -- lead!
ARTHUR: A duck.
CROWD: Oooh.
BEDEMIR: Exactly! So, logically...,
VILLAGER #1: If... the Buckyball.. weighs the same as a duck, it's made of wood!
Who would have thought it new matterials present new environment/health problems, the tone of the article is idiotic, if we had been messing with these matterials for a long time the tone would make sense, but as it is, big deal that the dangers of these things are little understood etc, of course they are, can any one tell me how the dangers etc of a brand new thing could be well understood??
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
I'm tired of "expert scientists", I'd rather the scientists formed a clump and sank.
A long, long time ago scientists were out to discover the truth (whatever that might be). Now they're lying and covering up to keep hold of their funding.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I just couldn't think of another application off the top of my head that would yield some high quality karma whoring.
Sigh.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
"You'll be negotiating with the aliens' mysterious leaders, the Brain Balls. They've got a lot of brains and they've got a lot of.. chutzpa."
Have No Fear Of Ice Cold Beer. The short version (see subject) is a list of all known naturally-occuring diatomic elements :)
So the results of studies won't be available for a few years. Does it strike anyone as absurd that tonnes of this stuff will be produced before anyone knows how much it takes to liquify your brain or even how to protect workers who make it? Maybe the latter will be used to determine the former. Horrible concept but theres plenty of precedents for it.
Good luck to the people trying to convince the greedy to delay their profits.
-- Howto: Get +5 (1) Whine about M$ (2) Namedrop Gentoo (3) Casually Abuse Mods (4) Namedrop Early Computer Model