Category: Uncategorized

When science got humans all wrong

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized4 Comments

I like science lab. Science lab doesn’t care about the race or gender of the experimenter. Nature does what it pleases. This doesn’t mean that scientists themselves have done the same. I wrote a novel about this. But it’s out of print. Maybe I’ll revise it and resubmit it. It got good reviews and bad reviews because people are different. We love to classify these differences—give ourselves a Meyers Briggs test or an Enneagram number on the basis of a personality test. As stated by  Merve Emry of Oxford University, “We are seduced by the fact that it presents that knowledge in a painless and easily digestible way.”

Meyers Briggs was developed as a parenting tool in the 1800s but is generally regarded as pseudo science. Classification gives us a tidy, often too tidy, way of knowing about a person or ourselves.

Probably we have always classified ourselves and others in a form of efficient thinking, but science helped us do this. The familiar “Genus species classification” was developed in the mid 1700s by Carl Linnaeus – who saw plants, animals and rocks as each having their own Kingdom and broke the distinctions down from there. His description of Homo Sapiens includes four distinct varieties: “H. sapiens europaeus, H. sapiens afer, H. sapiens asiaticus, and H. sapiens americanus” , ranging from H. sapiens europaeus on the one (best) end, to H. sapiens afer at the other.” By the way, the notion of strict gender roles took off in the 1800s along with the rise of classification. Look different, are different. It lead to scientific racism.

Classification was a hot topic back in the 1800s. Naturalists ran all over the globe catching insects, other animals, and plants to classify them. Classification relied on morphology, which in this case means physical traits. This classification system made it easy for scientist to talk to each other and compare notes. It inspired Charles Darwin’s adventures and Gregor Mendel’s study of pea plants which led to modern genetics.

Yes, scientists had a racism problem.  Almost from the start of the classification scheme, scientists attempted to prove some were better than others. Beautiful people were innately superior and of course, people from non-European cultures were inferior. Science had a racism problem.

A distinction between science and scientific racism is that the creation of separate racial categories was not solely for the sake of a biological system of classification, but rather for political means:

Scientific magical thinking about European superiority led to a nonscientific justification for European colonialism and slavery. The “preconceptions” were based on the idea that nature, and not social forces, created social classes.  Poor people were scientifically ordained by Nature to be usd by the upper class. It explains social inequalities not in terms of the society failing to provide for its citizens, but rather a group’s failure to have superior breeding.

One example of personal racism in science that I’m acutely aware of is that of Percy Julian.  This brilliant chemist faced numerous barriers in his life because he was black African American. You can read about them here in the appropriately titled “Percy Julian and the False Promise of Exceptionalism.”  Despite being a brilliant synthetic and natural products chemist, he faced everything from having his ideas nearly stolen to having his home set on fire. He would show up to college and later job interviews thanks to his impressive resume, only to be turned away by other scientists because once they saw him, the place which invited him to interview didn’t like his morphology. Fortunately, a few anti-racists recognized his potential and he made many advances in steroid chemistry and in products made from soybeans, including paint.

Scientists now use DNA to help them study and classify. They can tell you about many times when morphology will lead you wrong—a fly can look like a bee for example.  Even Darwin suspected as much.

Scientists contributed to racism but now, many are trying to undo the harm. The Human Genome Project has determined that race as doesn’t exist. Why? Because “individual genetic traits are inherited independently”, not as a group. Therefore culture, intelligence, athletic ability, et cetera cannot be racially linked due to the independent nature of these genetic traits. People who hang out together and share traits might interbreed and give the illusion that these traits are connected, but they are not. For this reason, the concept of race is more of a cultural construct than any kind of biological reality.

This doesn’t mean racism doesn’t exist.  “Racism has led to injustices against millions of people, through slavery and colonization, through apartheid and through continuing prejudice today. The point of learning about and analyzing racism in science must be to ensure that it is never repeated.” Making up for hundreds of years of science gone wrong has been difficult. The more we learn, the more those with preconceived notions fight back, despite their lack of evidence. In fact, it might happen that very soon, the publications I linked to will dissolved into the realm of 404 error.

New doors and locked in the bathroom

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized1 Comment

When you live in an old house, you’re never sure how much money you should put into it.  Will it maintain its value? Usually, yes, a well-maintained one will hold value. My house is 100 years old and I sometimes ponder moving, encouraged by my kids to find a home with one floor–an older person home where I won’t fall down the stairs. But I haven’t fallen down stairs since that one time in Detroit. And this year, my husband fell in the kitchen, not on stairs, and broke his neck–no home is safe if you aren’t paying attention. And my house has a fallout shelter so I’m not moving for at least four years.

Throughout the years, my older home has gotten –among other things–new basement floors, some new wiring, radon remediation, new paint, a new front porch, a new driveway, and refinished wood floors. As for redecorating, I’ve done some, but old bedrooms and their archaic wallpaper borders hold happy memories. The upstairs bathroom wallpaper is a relic, but I can still picture my happy kids splashing beneath that paper. Back in the day, my husband was handy, but he’s lost his enjoyment of it. I can paint but I’m too short for some spots even with a decent ladder. There’s been a comfortable sameness, a sentimental inertia. But recently, something has pushed me toward doing more than just preserving the status quo. My husband got locked in the bathroom.

A too- old lock broke. His neck was as broken as the lock so climbing out the window wasn’t an option. The screwdriver handed through a transom didn’t remedy the situation. He had to bust the whole lock and in the process, the hollow core door cracked. Memories or not, it was kind of ugly and cheap. And now busted.

We replaced it and the companion door to the basement with some oak doors to match the floors. Oak may be out or maybe it’s back in. No matter. The contractor was a perfectionist and the doors are beautiful. They bring me joy, even a calmness, because they aren’t janky. The locks are new and so are the latches. We can close the doors with confidence.

The doors tell me what Aerosmith tried to back when I was a part time DJ (although Dream On was on oldie by then): the past is gone. Maybe after I paint the hall to the bathroom, I’ll find something new to spruce up, and not let sentimentality hold me back. Then, someday, I’ll move on to my one floor dream house in a liberal area. Dream on.

Above: a new door, and although I did love the beagle mutt that scratched the old frame, it’s time for a new coat of paint. And yes, my husband’s neck has healed.

The sweet ring of leaded glass and other dilemmas

On By Catherine HausteinIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

You’ve no doubt read the news, in the US our mental health has been damaged by lead. Not only does lead lower IQ and damage areas of the brain that control aggression, it disrupts thyroid function. Lead impairs brain growth and poisons neurons. It contributes to ADHD. It encourages cancer. Even teen-pregnancy has been linked to lead exposure. The poorer a person is, the more likely they are to have a high blood lead level but this hasn’t always been so. 

In the Colonial US, higher lead levels were found in bones of wealthy slave owners in the US than were found in their slaves. Why? Lead was used in white pottery glazes such as in dishes. Lead was applied amply to decorative pottery such as Delft. It was also used in pewter. Slaves, who had to make their own plates and had no access to leaded glazes. It was also used extensively in white paint. It was used in pipes. It gives a “ring” to wine glasses as shown below.

I used lead test swabs to follow up and the ringing glass tested positive, along with several older glassware items and a new dish from Italy. This photo shows the items with positive lead swabs, shown by a pink color.

 I decided to test all my glassware and cull the leaded items. I am a depository for hand-me-downs from the ancestors and some of them were far too materialistic. I needed some sort of reason not to keep all this burdensome stuff. The bag of leaded items will go to a recycling center or maybe a few will be used for laboratory demonstrations. 

Of note, lead in glassware was banned in the late 70s. An Alvin and the Chipmunk glass bearing a date of 1985 was lead free.

For more about lead testing at home, here is a great article. 

My question is: are we all brain damaged? The answer very well could be yes for those born not so recently. The reason is not our glassware as it is about leaded gasoline. And perhaps guns.

The link between lead and crime has been published everywhere from science journals to  Forbes to Mother Jones. Violent crime in the United States rose in the 1960s, spiked in the 90s, and has plummeted since then. Why did the generation associated with peace signs and hippies turn out to be the most violent in recent history?  Many scientists point to one reason–lead in gasoline during their childhoods.

Lead in the form of tetraethyl lead was added to gasoline in the 1920s in to help electric igniting engines operate more smoothly. It worked well despite one problem with it. The additive was known to cause “madness” and hallucinations. This had been first documented in the 1850s. In fact, workers at the first lead additive manufacturing plant died after going “looney.” Despite this, the additive worked effectively and was cheap so the companies that made it pushed forward to add it to gasoline. It was temporarily banned in parts of the nation–not the Midwest however–making the breadbasket of our nation a rich source of environmental lead. With careful marketing and lobbying by the companies that made the additive, the health effects were down-played and the new technology was given a clean bill of health by the U.S. Surgeon General in the late 1920s. Thus, leaded gasoline was heavily used across the United States for over forty years.

Analytical chemistry upped its game in the 1970s, finding that the lead persisted in the environment and in people. Many states began phasing it out in the 70s and 80s. It was banned state by state and eliminated from car gasoline in 1996.  But since it is an element, lead can’t break down into anything simpler. Scientists believe that everyone over 40 in the U.S. has some degree of lead poisoning. Lead can be cleared from blood by the body, but it resides in bones for 30 years or longer. Lead still lingers in many locations in the U.S.– thanks to corroding old pipes, old paint and even old cans and glassware. 

It’s no surprise that lead is found at high levels in shooting ranges. These are regulated by OSHA and there are rules demanding clean up but these rules are not always followed. People who work at firing ranges & those who go to firing ranges often show elevated blood lead levels, especially if the ranges are indoor ranges. Air propelled bullets and those with copper jackets can help reduce the lead exposure to an extent. Another precaution is not allowing children to engage in gun play. However, gun ownership itself is a hazard for children of gun owners and increases their blood lead levels. Yes, an adult having a gun is linked to higher blood levels in their kids.

Eating meat shot with lead is also dangerous, especially for children. Adding vinegar to game shot with lead bullets makes the lead even more soluble in the meat and increases the toxicity. However, lead in gasoline has been by far the most egregious contributor. As use was curtailed, lead in blood began to drop dramatically. Crime did as well.

Fuel for small airplanes contains lead and they are one of the major contributors to lead pollution today. However, lead in gasoline has been by far the most egregious contributor. As use was curtailed, lead in blood began to drop dramatically. Crime did as well.

The tragedy of lead poisoning in the Unites States is a sad tale of greed and lack of regulation. Every one of us has suffered to some extent from exposure to lead. The cautionary take-away is that when it comes to chemicals, we need more regulations and more care taken before approving them for use in consumer products.

Thank you to all my subscribers for supporting and reading my work.

The beautiful ring of leaded glass

Bombs and Broomsticks

On By Catherine HausteinIn science, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Bombs and Broomsticks

For New Year’s Eve, I watched Wicked with family. It was good, especially in the coziness of a family living room with loved ones and snuggly pets.  Some parts left me on the edge of my seat. The scene where the professor was hauled away was a little too believable. It’s happened before and it can happen again. Anti-intellectualism is a tool of dictators and we’ve see it crop up in the US, as shown in the historical movie Oppenheimer.

The story of Jay Robert Oppenheimer is well known to scientists my age. Many people have mused about why the movie Oppenheimer didn’t show the destruction of the bomb. Clearly a terrible weapon was created but the film is about the people and what came after in the US. 

The movie did a good job of showing the motivation of the scientists. Germany had discovered fission, the atom smashing power of the bomb. How was fission, the splitting of the atomic nucleus discovered? At the time, uranium was the heaviest naturally occurring element. German scientists at Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassman, and Lisa Meitner were trying to make a heavier element by knocking heavyweight uraniumwith a neutral particle—a neutron–to make it heavier. There were probing the secrets of the inside of an atom. When hit with a nucleus, the uranium didn’t get bigger. It broke into bits and released a lot of energy. (Read more here)

An aside here. Most atomic action occurs on the outside of the atom, the electron cloud. Electrons move around to create bonds and break bonds, and that’s most of what happens in a chemistry lab. It causes rust and powers our cells. But with nuclear reactions, we deal with the inside of the atom, and the inside of the atom is held together with the tremendous force. Einstein’s famous equation E equals MC squared dictates the immense force that’s holding the inside of an atom together. And all of this was being studied at the time of World War 2.

Hitler was a bad guy and a lot of the scientists in Germany were Jewish. They either fled to another country in Europe, as Lisa Meitner did, or they, emigrated to the US. They came with a lot of understanding and people were scared. I can kind of understand working on a horrible weapon. And as the movie Oppenheimer points out, scientists were not 100% sure how destructive this might be or how the US government would use it.

There was tremendous fallout from the bomb, pun intended. And. It created a lot of sickness. A lot of doubt. The movie doesn’t really cover that. It starts and ends with Oppenheimer being grilled by dim bulb senators. Why? He did everything his country asked of him and he did it well.  However, he dared to go to a couple communist meetings. His brother was for a while a communist and he’d had a communist girlfriend. Clearly, that didn’t stop him from helping his country. It didn’t stop him from stepping up and using his genius to create this deadly weapon for his country. If you watched carefully the Senators are the villains. The Conservative senators are the villains. They use science. And scientists. And then? They dismissed them. Like any narcissist would do.

I’ve written before about hate mail I’ve personally gotten as a scientist in Pella, Iowa. You can never be conservative enough for conservatives unless you 100% agree with them. You can be their friends. You can build a weapon for them, but they’ll turn on you because these are all or nothing people. As a scientist, I once felt obligated to point out inconsistencies in public policy to elected officials. And I’ve gotten some pretty mean comments and letters from more than one of them. I’ve given up thinking that they write these crazy bills and say these crazy things because their staff hasn’t informed them enough. These are all or nothing people. They don’t tolerate any opposition to their values without totally smearing the people who are questioning them.

Science, on the other hand moves forward when scientists put ego aside and admit some uncertainty and ignorance as they argue about evidence gathered according to the sanctioned best practices of the time. Moving forward needs some questioning the reigning values and building on them.

Many US scientists worked on the bomb. You know who didn’t? Lisa Meitner, the person who first recognized the fission reaction, who’d fled to England. And here’s another thing to think about: Germany wasn’t close to developing an atomic bomb. A lot of their scientists had left the country. (That’s what you get when you don’t appreciate intelligence and diversity.) They couldn’t enrich uranium. The scientists thought such a weapon would be a bad look for Germany. And Hitler was basically too dumb to appreciate the science. Naziism was anti-intellectual and experienced a brain drain.

(Kind of like Iowa is seeing.) The German scientists saw the destructive power and restrained themselves. It should be pointed out that Nazi doctors did nothing of the sort. 

Scientists are curiosity driven and they like to have a project. They are somewhat mission oriented in their research. Fundamental questions really fascinate them. Messing with the inside of an atom when the outside had been what was studied was like catnip to scientists. This is a criticism of scientists—they look at their accomplishments with rose-colored glasses. This means we as citizens need to elect thoughtful leaders, too. Leaders can make bad science decisions. Leaders influence the morality of a society.  As this article points out, it’s not the scientists who shape the ethics of a nation, it’s the leaders. History (and fiction) shows that having a mad-man for a leader will give scientists (and sorceresses) pause, or, as in Wicked, will drive away your best talent. They might even take a few of your secrets with them. And that is a ray of sunshine.

My first novel is out of print but my second novel is on sale at Kobo. Like most of my fiction, it satirizes the ethical problems scientists face as they search for romance and try to understand society. 

Hurricanes and Oyster farms

On By Catherine HausteinIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I spent the holidays on a journey of 5,000. First, we drove with our dog to Charlotte NC to see family. We drove so we could take our dog and she could be with the pet sitter and her cousin dogs and cat while we humans flew to our holiday destination. By the way, she was very naughty and ate out of the litter box when we were gone. 

I would say something about this grin but it would be cliché.

Then we flew with family to Seattle and drove a little further onto Kitsap Peninsula. It was beautiful and shrouded in mist, giving way to sun on occasion.

This is through-a-window photo of an Oyster farm for sale. If you’re looking to get away from it all and are up for some demanding work, this might be your opportunity. If I was young and disgruntled with the corporate world, this might be for me. It’s even clean by farming standards.

We visited a little seaside tourist town, much like Pella with a Viking theme and Norwegian heritage.

We even had iconic Chinese food Christmas Day.

We returned to Charlotte for more time together. At last weather and upcoming school forced our hand and it was time to leave. 

You might ask why we drive. I wonder this myself when I’m on the highway. My parents and my in-laws were from the Road Trip Generation of the 1950s and my family is from Michigan. My uncle even worked for the auto industry as an accountant. My husband’s family took a cross-country trip, starting in San Diego. We grew up on car trips. And our dog loves a car trip and is an excellent traveler. The anxiety about a road trip come from planning the route due to weather issues. Weather is becoming more extreme, and I know people who have given up road trips entirely after encountering fires, flood, and tornados on a single trip!

On the way back, we traveled through the area damaged by Hurricane Helene. (map here)

I-40 through the Blue Ridge Mountain region was washed away by Helene. It was being repaired and the repair collapsed, so travelers must resort to various detours. GPS suggested some detours but once we got close to the site, the North Carolina Highway department had huge signs suggesting other paths and fortunately, we went with the highway department. Trucks took a much longer detour (complete with bad weather on the day we left) and cars had a road with one lane open in each direction. (here’s a map for those interested)

All along the route, starting in Asheville, we saw trees lying flat after being pushed down the mountain. Quite a lot of the damage has clearly been cleaned up. We were guided by signs with signs telling truckers not to take the car route. Here are some photos of trucks crashed along the by-pass in the area known as The Rattler. Highway Patrol were staked out along the way to keep trucks off and for good reason. The one lane road was no passing all the way but somewhat peaceful despite twists and flurries. DOT workers even directed traffic at one turn along the way, which was good because that area had no cell service and the GPS went down. Below is a photo of the town of Hot Springs, population 520 About 40% of the surrounding area had no cell serviceeven before the hurricane. The hurricane knocked out most cell service in the area. You can see where the people in this region would not get information about a pending flood. 

I don’t want a government dictatorship but on this part of the trip, the government and government workers were extremely helpful and reliable. GPS uses AI for the directions and our car-only shortcut wasn’t among the routes mapped out by AI. When I read this article about UPS shutting down some rural drop off areas, I got to thinking about how rural areas are underserved populations. They don’t have enough profit in them, and they truly need equality and inclusion, yet vote against it. 

Cell service relies on private carriers. When my kids lived in Detroit, US Cellular service was terrible and even charged me for being in Canada when I wasn’t. In Kitsap County Washington, also fairly rural, my Verizon carrier was so slow I thought my phone was broken. Yet here we are in the US voting for the politicians who want to privatize services and cut government. I can’t see this working out well for the rural areas. Think about applying this patchwork of services to the entire country. As a nation, we’ve already tossed out Net Neutralityso our carriers can do whatever they want to us. Who knows what lies ahead for rural areas. They might become less and less desirable places to live, as before the rural electrification act.

Below, traveling on the detour, Hot Springs in the snow.

For now, I’m home safely before the impending snowstorm, having a cup of coffee, watching the world go by, and wishing those on the road safe travels. 

2024 Science News

On By Catherine HausteinIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

2024 science news

Trust in science has fallen, not across the globe but in the US among conservative people This began during the pandemic when people decided to trust their conservative politicians instead of infectious disease experts. Project 2025, the sweeping right-wing blueprint for a new kind of U.S. presidency, will sabotage science-based policies that address climate change, the environment, abortion, health care access, technology and education...and even cancer research. The government funds 40% of basic science, science done to advance knowledge and improve health, and the research is shared with the public and other scientists.  Now, scientific research is on the chopping block.

The US isn’t the only country giving science funding an ill-advised overhaul. New Zeeland is cutting research into social sciences, favoring research into the economy. This raises concerns because this fundamental discipline is an important tool for understanding social cohesion.

Bad news for Boomers and Gen X—the lead from leaded gas probably has made you a little psychotic.

Gun violence is declared a public health crisis.

Consolidation in the fertilizer industry, made worse when Koch Industries bought the taxpayer subsidized Wever Fertilizer plant,

Fructose promotes tumor growth by helping the cancer cells make their outer membranes. Fructose is a simple sugar found in fruits.  Its use in the form of high fructose corn syrup, developed in 1964, has been criticized for causing pollution as well as detrimental health effects such as high cholesterol and obesity. Now we know that it helps promote tumor lipid growth. Lipids are fatty compounds like cholesterol and triglycerides. Lipids make up the membranes around all cells, including cancer cells. Shouldn’t some forms of fructose carry a warning label?

There’s mounting evidence that pesticides, plastics, and other pollutants harm our bones & butterflies & cause heart problems. Are we going to demand more regulations or will we accept our fate?

Getting some new pavement, as I did? It causes 8% of the world carbon emissions. Good news ahead! Climate friendly concrete will soon become available.

Unwashed men pose danger. You may have heard of VOCs, volatile organic compounds, which are released into the air from synthetic products such as carpet, gasoline engines, and paint. These compounds can cause health issues ranging from irritation, headaches, organ damage, and cancer. And, when men don’t wash, they emit them.

Climate change caused 150 billion dollars in damage in 2023, yet few people in the US think they will be affected. Is weather becoming more severe? Yes, it appears so. Hurricane Helene, which washed out a highway I take when I visit my daughter, was an example of heat fueled rain and winds.

Bird flu marches on, with new testing done on milk to ensure safety and track the disease. Pasteurization keeps milk safe. Yet here in Iowa, one of the dirtiest states ever, the bird flu is concentrating and progressing due to lack of any regulations.

Speaking of tests, a blood test to supplement the more invasive colonoscopy has been approved. With colorectal rates skyrocketing, this test should make getting screened easier, although it will not entirely replace colonoscopies.

Plenty of unhealthy synthetic chemicals have been banned this year, including those used in the airline and dry cleaning industries.

The US delayed acting on the Covid -19 virus, setting the vaccine development back. Are you one of those people who think the virus came from a lab? Scientists don’t agree with that.

Humans have predicted eclipses for thousands of years and yet, it’s a pretty tricky calculation. On April 8, many in the US came together to view an Eclipse. Thanks Mother Nature!

A Kinder Christmas Card

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized3 Comments

I made an attempt to connect by mailing Christmas cards this year. Yes, there’s such a thing as social media these days but believe it or not, not all I know use it. I was partly successful. Here’s one card I sent out, looking both hopeful and isolated.

I recently found a stash of old cards, some from my 102 year old aunt, and I went through them, finding everything from the philosophical to the glittery to the playful.

This one is by far the oldest. 

These are from the 80s and 90s. Ziggy (top right) was popular from the late 60s to the mid 80s.

This one hit me because of its kind tone. According to a search, it is from American Greetings in the early 90s, before we as a nation became hardened after 9-11. 

Yes, baby Jesus looks remarkably white but when is the last time you saw the gentle side of Christmas reminding you to love and be kind? Kindness is kind of outdated.

I’m not sure if you are familiar with the “Dan Brown” style ideas about Mary Magdalene and the more gentle and magnanimous side of Christianity but if not, here is a non-academic run down of it.  Here is a more academic version. One thing is known, the rich and powerful couldn’t endure any of that equality stuff. I’ve seen this play out in my own town. The influence of the greedy on our lives is truly exhausting. And they aren’t letting up.

We were all warned that kindness would be seen as a weakness and this is because “real kindness involves acknowledging the existence of injustice.”  Kindness and all of its moral high ground, is basically free, but we as a nation reject it over and over. Kindness, it seems, is only for kids. 

Kindness works against authoritarianism. To believe in authority is often associated with reduced empathy for those not like you. Having empathy, even doing things like wearing a mask, is not a winning proposition.

Looking at that card made me peaceful. You know what? Kindness reduces stress. “Kindness and caring are prosocial behaviors that build positive interpersonal connections and can uplift both the giver and receiver.”

Yes, “kindness creates positive (supportive and meaningful) social connections, which, in turn, reduce the response to stressors as well as fulfill basic, innate needs that are critical to health and longevity. Under the umbrella term of “kindness” are included.”

Besides being socially beneficial, kindness helps reduce anxiety on an individual level. Mean vibes, as in tough guy, hurt you.

This shouldn’t be confused with having no boundaries or letting the narcissists walk all over you. Read here if this is your worry.

Maybe next year, I will find a kind, sappy card. In the meantime, we can all benefit from recognizing that mean attitudes along with selfishness and greed hurt all of us. Don’t be afraid to reject the mean side of things. As it says in the previous link, walk away after the third mean thing.  As Of Montreal says, “If you feel like you can’t do it for yourself then do it for us.”

And if you have any tips for making Christmas and the rest of this year kinder, send them my way!

Lessons in Alchemy

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized3 Comments

One of my favorite monsters is Frankenstein’s monster, the guy created by the scientist Victor Frankenstein from assembled body parts and brought to life by a spark of lightning. The careless scientist was hoping to bring his dear mother back to life. You can’t blame a guy for trying. But he violated a rule of science–he worked alone. The hapless creature he made was created in secret. Only alchemists work in secret. Although alchemists came up with some still used techniques such as distillation, their results aren’t reliable, reproducible, or even understandable.  Some of their ingredients included “thoughts and prayers.” They’ve failed “peer review.” They weren’t necessarily mad scientists, just bad scientists.

The rules of new science are:

Never work alone in lab.

Keep a carefully detailed lab notebook.

Share your results with others so they can be verified and reproduced.

Thus, to work in secret is to bring about all sorts of trouble. In 1818 when the novel Frankenstein was published, scientists in Mary Shelley’s native England and in other countries close to them culturally were just beginning to move away from alchemy.  Understanding electricity was the new hot topic. Batteries made from two metals and an electrolyte were a breakthrough in Italy. In the US, Benjamin Franklin established that lightning was a huge static charge and that it was attracted to tall pointy objects. No more would people see a lightning strike as being the hand of an angry God. It was Mother Nature. 

Inspired by electric eels and frog legs jumping between the poles of a battery, humans hoped that electricity could “reanimate” dead things. Shocking executed people to see if they would revive was tried unsuccessfully.   

As for Frankenstein’s creature, he turned out to be intelligent and sensitive, but without parental guidance. He resorted to menacing his creator once he had been firmly rejected and had no companion to turn to. Like all great writing, Frankenstein says something about the human condition. The novel makes a statement on nature and nurture and the cruelty of judging and rejecting someone based on their appearance.

Yet here we are, facing the same kind of science that made the creature and made him lose his mind. 

Project 2025, the sweeping right-wing blueprint for a new kind of U.S. presidency, is here. It will sabotage science-based policies that address climate change, the environment, abortion, health care access, technology and education...and even cancer research. The government funds 40% of basic science, science done to advance knowledge and improve health, and the research is shared with the public and other scientists. In fact Obama made sure all of us can access federally funded research. Now, scientific research is on the chopping block.

If Congress agrees to the cuts and to the foolish idea of replacing government scientists with many years of experience with political loyalists, expect to see bad science. Scientific growth requires autonomy of thought. (This isn’t the same as technological growth.) No doubt other countries will take the lead in basic science research and could share information with our scientists if they are allowed. Corporations will do their research and patent it but it won’t be basic science and it won’t be public. 

As an indicator of things to come, a panel of non-expert politicians recently declared that COVID came from a lab, something most scientists don’t see evidence for, and that Trump did a great job handling it. (A prestigious science journal published results saying the US delayed acting on the Covid -19 virus, setting the vaccine development back. Are you one of those people who think the virus came from a lab? Scientists don’t agree with that.)

This is the kind of “king pleasing” science done before science was real. It’s more like alchemy.Alchemists and kings frequently crossed paths in history because kings really wanted to turn less valuable metals into gold. This can be simulated by plating reactions such as this one and is probably how alchemists appeased his highness. Of course, not everyone was convinced and for a good reason. I’ve even written a futuristic novel on this theme. 

You could say that science in the hands of politicians and loyalists is akin to an unsupervised child. It could become a monster or maybe just make a mess. We’ll see. 

How we got The Pill

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized3 Comments

I remember the birth of the birth control pill much like many might remember Kennedy’s assassination or the Challenger blowing up. No, I wasn’t ready for birth control, but my mom sure was and as the oldest, I was deeply sensitive to her frustrations as a being a housewife who was frequently pregnant. My mom had gone to college and chosen one of the three paths available for women who were educated:  secretary, nurse or teacher. She was a teacher who had to quit her job when she was pregnant with me because showing might tell the students that she’d been up to something.  As the oldest, I must have been her confidant because I do remember her in the living room of our split level in Rockville, Maryland, sun streaming onto the wood floors,  saying how happy she was that she could just take a pill and not have kids anymore. Having some symptoms of eldest daughter syndrome at a young age, I shared her joy.

To quote Janis Joplin, my mom was searching for a life very different than what she had known. It was common for girls to look at their future in horror back then–marriage and children. That’s it. My mom was a loving mother, but being a homemaker bored her and I could sense it.

Wanting to control family size is nothing new. Some of the earliest records from ancient Egypt contain recipes for birth control, primarily soaking lint in substances such as honey and acacia leaves putting it you know where. Nursing for many years was also a suggested method. The techniques, put forth by female doctors and midwives, were for avoiding overpopulation and keeping women beautiful. The later was the most important. Interestingly enough, scientists today link an increased biological age to each pregnancy a woman endures.

The ancient Greeks had different approaches from eating pomegranate seeds (hello Persephone, you had no choice but to eat that seed), infanticide and encouraging sex outside of marriage with someone of your own sex. This may seem shocking now, but they were very aware that again, the right family size was best for society.

Women in Aztec societies ate wild yams as birth control and Native Americans used it as a tea to prevent contraception. (Note: don’t try this at home. The Pill much improves the safety and effectiveness of this home remedy.) This plant contains one of the first substances studied as a possible birth control pill ingredient.

A hundred years ago, working with plant steroids was a large push in scientific research, with numerous substances isolated from plants such as soybeans. One, cortisol and cortisol related compounds, was effective in treating rheumatoid arthritis and was hailed as a miracle cure in the 1940s. Scientists were sure that other modified steroids would provide other miracle cures, including ability to control ovulation.

The birth control pill chemically manipulates a person’s natural sex hormones. Sex hormones are steroids with a somewhat simple structure, many of them being almost identical and similar to the structure of cholesterol. The basic secret behind the birth control pill is progesterone. This hormone is secreted during pregnancy to prevent ovulation and thicken the uterus. This tells the body to prepare for pregnancy and to stop further ovulation- no eggs are prepared to be released.

Progesterone alone is not a great birth control pill material. It breaks down in the stomach too quickly. Scientists set about to modify progesterone so that it could survive being taken as a pill.

Why were people so keen on a birth control pill? For one thing, public health measures including sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics resulted in fewer childhood deaths. As a result, family size was burgeoning, and children were becoming a financial burden. There were many reasons given for developing the birth control pill : to control population, to free women to enjoy sex, and to help people out of poverty. Many people working on and funding he perfect birth control formula  the noble goal of making sure that every person born was wanted and had a chance in life. They knew, as we do now, too many children too close together depletes the mother who is more likely to have complications in childbirth with subsequent pregnancies.  In some cases, women were fitted with IUDs to ”correct uterine problems.” Although often illegal, diaphragms were also women-centric birth control tools. However, the idea of a discretely taken medication which didn’t require insertion of a foreign object, an idea as old as time, was appealing

Katharine McCormick worked in conjunction with Gregory Pincus to find the ideal hormone. She provided funds to Pincus, an animal reproductive biologist, searching for the perfect progesterone like molecule. He tested several forms of progesterone on lab animals in a ramshackle lab in Massachusetts

When it was time for human trails, ethical and practical dilemmas raised their ugly heads. Finding test subjects wasn’t easy. One of the goals was to have ovulating and intelligent women who could be relied on to carry out the instructions to take the medication each day. It wasn’t so easy to find healthy people who wanted to take a new medication, especially when birth control still had a stigma for some.

Women in Puerto Rico stepped up to the task. Many of them thought there was no escape from poverty if they had more than a couple children. Abortion was legal fairly common in Puerto Rico. Many women from the mainland went there to have a “San Juan weekend.”  A pill was a better alternative. The trials were successful in preventing pregnancy, however, shady, in that the women who volunteered were not clearly informed that this was an experimental drug not previously tested on humans! In fact, one of the people involved in setting up the trial was on a mission to sterilize woman in Puerto Rico because he saw them as unfit. I can look back at this time and see why people can be afraid of a new medication. Thankfully, some guidelines have been put into place including informed consent. (Hopefully, these won’t be tossed out.)

Another set of patients was found at the Worcester State Hospital for the Chronically Ill, a mental asylum. Many of the women here were suffering from abuse and domestic conditions that were not bearable. Even men there were given the prototype pill to see how men reacted. These trails were a flop because no one was having sex.

The development of the Pill can fill a book. A formulation containing Norethynodrel and dubbed Enovid was developed. It was eventually called The Pill. Selling the idea to religious and social groups was a struggle. Some called it un-natural, and others compared it to permitting sexual gluttony, like being able to constantly eat cake. People still considered talking about birth control to be “porn” as shown in this comic where the woman has not used birth control but her children are naked inside the home, showing how anything can be called porn.

The first woman take The Pill, before it gained FDA approval, was not a poverty stricken over-worked mother but a well-to do white woman, Sue Dixson Searle, daughter of the Searle family, whose pharmaceutical business developed the formulation.  After two closely spaced babies, she decided she wanted a break and was happy to be “a pioneer.”  She lived to 91, dying recently in 2022, after being an enthusiastic patron of art of public lands in the Chicago area and a mother to three and great grandmother to many.  It must have been a disappointment to those who saw birth control as a means to reduce “undesirables” in the population, but the reason Dixson took the Pill harkens back to birth control in ancient Egypt—she wanted to be happy.

On Oct 1, 1957, the Pill was offered clandestinely to women since birth control was still a felony in 17 states.

The Pill was approved by the FDA May 6, 1960.

By 1965, more than 6.5 million women were taking the Pill. In 1963 the Dial Pak was introduced.

Slowly laws against contraception fell, and it was fully legalized in 1972.

 In 2023, a non-prescription alternative, the OPill was approved for purchase.

Yellow dots on blueAs for my mom, she stopped having babies and went back to work as a teacher and she and my dad resumed an active social life. People just want to be happy and limiting family size to your individual choice can make it easier.  But who knows, laws restricting its use may arise again.

The two books in the center of this snapshot of part of my messy bookcase were sources for this blog.

Who’s here for the apocalypse? (My neighbor for one)

On By Catherine HausteinIn chemistry, Uncategorized2 Comments

You may have heard of a consequence of the US, in 2018 under Trump, getting rid of the Iran Nuclear Deal. The deal, made by the Obama Administration, limited and surveilled Iran’s nuclear capacity. Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, did not like the nuclear deal—saying it could bring another Holocaust. The reason he had for his qualms was sanctions on Iran were lessened and they got financial relief for their concession. Israel had approved the deal but he represented new leadership. As a consequence, he wouldn’t negotiate with Biden (who did not bring back the deal) for peace in Palestine and is happy Trump won. Trump has a policy of maximum retribution to Iran.

The above graphic is from the Obama White House

The outcome of the having no nuclear deal is maybe a bust. Iran’s nuclear program is getting no surveillance. They don’t care about our feelings and thus, Iran has made enriched uranium. They are close to making it weapon-grade. What is that and why should anyone care? Sit back for a science lesson. (or skip to next paragraph with a bold font if you want to avoid it)

Uranium is a dense heavy metal that decays–meaning it’s radioactive and gives off particles and energy and transforms into a slightly lighter metal, thorium, which is also radioactive. 

It emits an alpha particle, the Mac truck of subatomic particles, which is also a helium nucleus. This is where earthly helium comes from! All forms of uranium are radioactive, but not the helium it emits. Don’t worry, your party balloons are safe. (If you want to learn more about sub-atomic particles, let me know!)

Uranium is unstable and thus radioactive. The word radioactive was coined by the Curies in 1898, with radio being related to ray as in a ray of light Many radioactive elements and nuclear reactions cause their surrounding to glow due to their energy. Uranium is slowly radioactive with all isotopes having long half-lives. It can be found in deposits across the globe.

Uranium can be made into a source of power when it undergoes fission. During fission, the core of the atom (the nucleus) is hit with a neutron and split into smaller pieces and new lighter elements are made. The lighter elements are more stable and the energy needed to hold the large unstable uranium together is released. More neutrons fly out and if enough atoms of the right isotope of uranium are nearby, they split other uranium atoms. A chain reaction ensues and this keeps the energy release going. If the reaction is fast enough, a bomb is created. 

Here’s the catch, not all forms of uranium undergo fission. Only the isotope with 92 protons and 143 neutrons in the nucleus, uranium 235 or U-235, is unstable enough to be broken in this fashion. And it’s not very plentiful. Only 0.7% of naturally occurring uranium is this isotope. And to allow for the chain reaction to occur, you need to concentrate this form of the metal. This is needed for both weapons grade and power reactor uranium but weapons grade uranium needs more concentration aka enrichment. This is not easy. Why does it take so much work? Chemical reactions occur with the outside of the atom–the electron cloud. This is an easy way to separate chemicals–by their different reactivities due to different electron clouds surrounding them. 

All isotopes of uranium have the same cloud of 92 electrons. This means the isotopes have to be separated by mass. The uranium is reacted with fluoride and forms a gas, then is passed through a porous membrane which only lets the smaller 235 isotope through. Alternately, it might be centrifuged. There are a few other less efficient methods of enrichment. This process demands lots of energy. Monitoring the energy use of enrichment facilities is one way to watch to see if a country is working on producing weapons grade U-235. 

What’s going on in Iran? After the Iran-Nuclear deal was trashed, they used centrifuge technology to enrich uranium to a concentration of 4.5%. The allowed limit with the Nuclear Deal was 3.67%. However, it takes 90% enrichment to make a bomb because a bomb reaction must go faster with more U-235 atoms close to each other. Getting to this level is a huge challenge needing a high tech centrifuge. Yes, Iran can get there if the nuclear deal remains sour for years and apparently, it will.

Right now, the world has a surplus of enriched uranium because of the many enrichment plants world wide. This is why tech billionaires want to use nuclear-powered AI. It will be fairly cheap. What country has a surplus of weapons grade uranium? The United States. We are sitting on a “gold mine” so to speak. Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan also have plenty of the stuff.

Scientists worked hard to create the bomb. Some did it unknowingly and others suffered remorse at how it was used. Scientists approved the Nuclear Deal, they supported it, and scientific collaboration is suffering at its end.  The end of the nuclear deal helped Trump achieve victory by gaining support from Arab-Americans and from his overseas pals, who are willing to make others suffer to achieve power. 

I suppose that’s nothing new but disappointing for idealists everywhere. People are terrible—they will draw out a war to get their way. Fortunately for me personally, I’ve been a scientist for so long, I no longer score in the idealist category on personality tests. That influence came from my educator parents. I’m one of those pattern seekers. I play the long game.(click for vacation photos). 

You know who also plays the long game, Christian Nationalists. They now have the president who has promised to bring the apocalypse. Yes, he did. And some of them are here for it, as this flag in my neighborhood shows. It says: The final chapter God Wins.

Here’s a view of a similar one.

It might seem harmless but look up Christian Nationalism. They are planning on seeing the Final Chapter, as in the final chapter of Revelations, which ends in destruction and god and angels coming down. The Apocalypse. You can read about these folks cheering on the apocalypse here. And by the way, they hate Jimmy Carter. 

I saw apocalypse flag flying homeowner today as we both walked our dogs. We look similar when out walking. Our paths didn’t quite cross or I would have asked her to explain more about the flag.

Do I really think the apocalypse is at hand? No. It would ruin the world economy and that’s the last thing the autocrats want. But according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, it’s 90 seconds to doomsday. Better stock up on necessities, maybe a water purifier, and get your vaccines while you can! And personally, I’m going to cut back on social media because it’s full of inaccuracies and products I don’t/won’t need.