bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Billboard and the Garden: A Struggle for Roots
Authors: Zukin Sharon
Published: November 2020

The weather is unusually warm for a Saturday morning in mid-October, and the clear horizon of the sky stretches blue and wide above this distant patch of Brooklyn. To the southeast, high above the elevated subway tracks, a jet plane climbs on the first part of its journey, away from Kennedy Airport in Queens, its real point of departure, but also far away from the two-story, redbrick houses and vacant lots of East New York, long known as one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City. When you get out of the subway train at Van Siclen Avenue and walk down the stairs from the elevated tracks, you feel a bit lost in the shadows and the absence of shops, except for a small corner bodega, on the quiet street. But a short, smiling woman in her sixties, who gets off the train with you, sees that you don’t look black or Hispanic and senses that you don’t live in the neighborhood; she invites you to walk with her. Improbably, on the next block, almost directly under the tracks, three lush, green gardens, carefully tended and fenced, come into view. Inside, planted in neat rows, green beans and mint wait to be picked. Small onions peek through the earth, ready to be dug before the first frost. A few peppers fl ash slivers of bright red through the leaves of tomato and squash plants that have already seen the last harvest of the year. These oases represent the time and effort of a small number of community gardeners who live in the neighborhood. Since the 1990s they have been created and maintained by the gardeners’ hard work and earnest planning, both subsidized and jeopardized by the city and state governments; like the Red Hook food vendors, they are a tangible symbol of the constant struggle to put down roots in the city, especially if you don’t have much money. The helpful woman whom you have just met invites you to visit one of the gardens, a small lot of about one-third of an acre.
Personal Experiences of Individuals with Aniridia
Authors: Otis Jessica J.
Published: November 2020

Editor’s Note: Since not much was known about aniridia for many years some doctors did medical procedures that we now know should not be done on aniridic eyes. Please do not use any specific story here as a guide for your journey, since some of the medical procedures mentioned should not have been done. Furthermore, please make sure to see a doctor with experience and knowledge of anirida. Lastly, please keep in mind, each person’s journey has different medical issues. Not everybody will experience the exact same medical challenges in their journeys. Many people affected by aniridia go through similar experiences. Some deal with bullies differently than others, and some may have difference experiences with employment-related issues. Whatever experiences you have had in your life, these stories will show that you are not alone. Many others have felt and gone through situations similar to ones you have gone through. It is our hope that these stories inspire and help you with any struggles you may have now or in the future. I was born with a case of sporadic aniridia in 1976 in Maui, Hawaii, to my parents, Mike and Pat. I have one brother two years older who has normal vision, but my mom had a miscarriage of a girl with the same aniridia condition. I had a normal childhood, doing everything the majority of kids did, including soccer, Cub Scouts, body surfing, boogie boarding, and bicycling. In my early teens I competed in outriggered canoe racing. This was questioned due to my vision, but my six-man crew placed first in the state championship regatta. This experience inspired me to continue in the area of sports and enjoy them while testing my limits, which was done with cross-country running and track and field in high school. When I graduated from Maui High School in 1994, it was considered a great accomplishment by my parents and many teachers who had doubts about my learning abilities due to the inability to read the work written on the board.
Low Vision and Aniridia
Authors: Bulmann Jennifer K.
Published: November 2020

Aniridia affects many visual aspects of one’s life. This chapter will highlight many of these effects. Functional changes that occur due to aniridia will be discussed. Once the patient’s vision is assessed and goals are established with a thorough eye examination, numerous avenues can be taken to ensure the support of all the patient’s health care providers. Referrals can be made to appropriate professionals to ensure full understanding and management of the ocular condition. Visual acuity is the measurement used to determine vision levels. Normal vision is 20/20, which means that what a normal person sees at 20 feet, the patient sees at 20 feet. If their vision is 20/40, they would need to be at a distance of 20 feet to see what someone with normal vision can see at 40 feet. The decrease in visual acuity in those with aniridia usually ranges from under 20/60 to as low as approximately 20/400. This is due to the lack of development of the macular area, or fovea. The fovea is responsible for our clearest, most precise vision. Those with visual acuity of 20/200 or worse that is best corrected while wearing spectacles or contact lenses in the better-seeing eye are considered legally blind. While most people who suffer from aniridia are not legally blind, they are visual impaired. Visual impairment is defined as visual acuity of 20/70 in the better-seeing eye when optimally corrected with glasses or contact lenses. The designation of “visual impairment” also has a functionality factor. If a person has a reduction in the ability of the eye or the visual system to perform to a normal ability, he/she is considered visually impaired. Visual field is the measurement of peripheral vision. Those with aniridia may have decreased peripheral vision. This is not directly due to aniridia, but rather to glaucoma, which may develop due to structural changes in the eye. Glaucoma is explained in detail in the glaucoma chapter of this book.
Parents’ Experiences
Authors: Otis Jessica J.
Published: November 2020

Editor’s Note: Since not much was known about aniridia for many years some doctors did medical procedures that we now know should not be done on aniridic eyes. Please do not use any specific story here as a guide for your journey, because some of the medical procedures mentioned should not have been done. Furthermore, please make sure to see a doctor with experience and knowledge of anirida. Lastly, please keep in mind, each person’s journey has different medical issues. Not everybody will experience the exact same medical challenges in their journeys. When we face challenges in our lives, we turn to those who love and support us. Yet sometimes it isn’t enough; we need the support of those who know how we are feeling and what we are going through. Parents who have children with aniridia can help each other by talking, lending advice, or just being there with a shoulder lean on. The stories compiled in this chapter are from parents who wish to share their personal experiences and struggles of having a child with aniridia. It is our wish that these stories will give you hope and inspiration as well as show you the love a parent has for a child, even when it seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. When I was 29 years old, we were blessed with our third child. We already had two sons, and now we had a little girl! From the very beginning, I knew something was wrong. Amy seemed to keep her eyes closed most of the time. When I took her outdoors, she would bury her head in my shoulder. I told our pediatrician to look at her eyes, and he told us not to worry. He said that she had muscle problems that surgery could correct. Over the months to follow, we decided to see an ophthalmologist. He told us that Amy had been born with a rare eye condition called aniridia.
Optic Tract and Lateral Geniculate Body Field Defects
Authors: Hedges III Thomas R.
Published: November 2020

Lesions affecting the optic tracts can cause a variety of neuro-ophthalmic signs. Not only are the visual field defects distinctive, but they are also associated with findings that encompass pupillary physiology and retinal nerve fiber anatomy as well as central and peripheral ocular motor function. For example, a patient with a lesion in the region of an optic tract might have: incongruous, macular splitting hemianopia, the details of which require careful performance and interpretation of the visual fields; band atrophy of the optic nerve and retinal nerve fiber layer; a relative afferent pupillary defect; and a third nerve palsy. Indeed, much of neuroophthalmology can be learned from a thorough understanding of lesions involving the optic tracts. Therefore, a review of the neuro-anatomy of this region is very important. After the fibers of the retinal ganglion cells decussate in the chiasm, they pass into the optic tract. The pupillary fibers leave the tract before the lateral geniculate body and travel to the midbrain. On magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans the hilum of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) can be seen where it abuts the lateral recess of the ambient cistern. The lateral and superior borders of the LGN are sharply defined by the white matter of the optic radiations. As the visual fibers make their way through the tract, there is a 90° nasal rotation. As a result, the two groups of homonymous fibers from both upper retinas, which represent the lower field, rotate to a medial position in the tract. The lower homonymous retinal fibers rotate laterally. The macular fibers (which are the vast majority) occupy a wedge-shaped area between the medial and lateral portions. The fibers from the corresponding retinal areas begin to associate themselves as they progress through the optic tract. The midbrain is nearby and the third cranial nerve lies just below the optic tract. Because of this imperfect match of corresponding retinal areas from each eye in the tract, the field defects due to lesions affecting the optic tract are incongruous— that is, the defect is different in each eye when demonstrated by the same-size test object.
Retrogeniculate Visual Field Defects
Authors: Hedges III Thomas R.
Published: November 2020

Automated perimetry has changed visual field testing considerably in recent years. What was considered an art has become an exercise in interpreting a set of data points obtained mechanically. Automated perimetry saves ophthalmologists time, which ideally should allow for more visual fields to be obtained on patients with unexplained vision loss. However, one must still keep in mind that automated perimetry still depends on the subjective responses from the patient. More important, automated perimetry has made interpretation of visual field defects, especially those due to occipital lesions, more difficult. For example, macular sparing may not be reflected, especially with programs limited to the central 24° or 30°. A 10° field may be required to show macular sparing. Also, sparing or involvement of the temporal crescent will not be shown with 24° or 30° visual fields. The limitation of most programs may lead to the appearance of incongruity when in fact the field is indeed congruous. Sometimes, a small homonymous hemianopic scotoma will be detected when one eye is tested but will be completely missed when the other eye is tested, giving the false impression that the visual loss is monocular. This is especially problematic if the patient also falsely interprets his or her homonymous loss of vision as monocular. Such individuals may complain of loss of vision in one eye when in fact it is one half of their visual field that is defective. The strategy of automated testing on either side the vertical and horizontal meridians may lead to the false impression that field defects respect the vertical or horizontal meridian when they do not. Automated perimetry should make it possible to test more patients with unexplained vision loss, but all automated visual fields must be interpreted with caution and, when necessary, substantiated with some other method, such as the tangent screen, which remains the most powerful method of detecting the size, shape, and density of visual field defects. Because most ophthalmologists no longer use tangent screen testing, at least an Amlser grid should be used to qualify the nature of a paracentral visual field defect.
Health Care
Authors: Baldwin Peter
Published: November 2020

The U.S. Economy does Differ from Europe’s: a less regulated labor market, but also an economy that is more hemmed in than might be expected. By European standards, America has hardish-working people, a state that collects fewer tax dollars, and workers who are paid well even if their holidays are short. In social policy, the contrasts are more moderate. Europeans commonly believe that the United States simply has no social policy—no social security, no unemployment benefits, no state pensions, and no assistance for the poor. As Jean-François Revel, the political philosopher and académicien, summed up French criticism, the United States shows “not the slightest bit of social solidarity.” Will Hutton similarly assures us that “The structures that support ordinary peoples’ lives—free health care, quality education, guarantees of reasonable living standards in old age, sickness or unemployment, housing for the disadvantaged— that Europeans take for granted are conspicuous by their absence.” And, in fact, the United States is the only developed nation, unless one counts South Africa, without some form of national health insurance, which is to say a system of requiring all its citizens to be insured in one way or another. This lack of universal health insurance is the one fact that every would-be comparativist working across the Atlantic knows, and the first one to be hoisted as the battle is engaged. One of the first attempts to quantify and rank health care performance, by the World Health Organization in 2000, gave the American system its due. Overall, it came in below any of our comparison countries, three notches under Denmark. In various specific aspects of health policy, it did better. For disability adjusted life expectancy, it came in above Ireland, Denmark, and Portugal; on the responsiveness of the health system, it ranked first; on a composite measure of various indicators summed up as “overall health system attainment,” it ranked above seven Western European countries. Even on the measure of “fairness of financial contribution to health systems,” where we might have expected an abysmal rating, the United States squeaked in above Portugal. That is, of course, damning with faint praise, especially given that in this particular aspect of the ranking—a well-meaning but other-worldly attempt by international bureaucrats to rake the entire globe over the teeth of one comb—Colombia came in first, outpacing its close rivals, Luxembourg and Belgium, while Libya beat out Sweden.
More Broadly
Authors: Baldwin Peter
Published: November 2020

Europeans Often Regard America as a country of bigness: big people, big cars, big houses. People we have already touched on; cars will come. American housing standards do fall in the upper half—but still well within— the European scale. Two rooms per inhabitant is the U.S. average. Residents of Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the UK, and Belgium have more (figure 88) The Irish have a higher percentage of their households occupying at least five rooms, the English and Spanish are very close runners-up. For social or public housing, transatlantic discrepancies pale before even more impressive disparities within Europe itself. Approximately a fifth of all accommodation in England and France is public housing, but those are by far the highest figures in Europe. In Italy, it is only 7%. In Spain, the fraction of the public housing stock of all dwellings is even less than in the United States, namely 1%. According to figures from the OECD, social housing scarcely exists at all in Portugal, at least to judge from the sums the government spends on it. Sweden, a country with a somewhat smaller population, spends well over 500 times as much. In any case, the range of state spending on housing in those nations with figures high enough to register as a fraction of GDP varies from 0.1% in Austria and Luxembourg to 14 times that in the UK. It is hard to call a penchant for social housing a defining European characteristic. Moreover, despite the absence of much public housing in the United States, the poorest fifth of tenants in America pay less of their income for housing than their peers in Sweden or Switzerland, and only a bit more than in the UK. America is oft en considered a stingy helper of Third World nations in distress. It is true that American foreign aid, in the form of direct cash grants, is not impressive if measured per capita. Nor is that of Austria or the Mediterranean nations, except France, which are all lower (figure 89).
Education and the Higher Pursuits
Authors: Baldwin Peter
Published: November 2020

It Is Generally Recognized that higher education in America is in comparatively good shape, with the main competition coming from the UK. With less than 5% of the world’s population the United States accounts for 40% of global research and development spending, produces 63% of all highly cited scientific publications, employs 70% of the world’s Nobel Prize winners, and is home to three-quarters of both the top 20 and top 40 universities in the world. Spending figures reveal the reasons why. As a proportion of total outlays on universities, government spending is lower in the United States than in any European nation (figure 91). But, as we have seen when looking at overall social spending, monies channeled through the state do not tell the whole story. Total spending on university education in America, measured as a percentage of GDP, is not merely high by European standards. It is some 60% above the nearest competitors, the Scandinavians, and more than twice the level of Germany, a country that once boasted universities as good as any (figure 92). It is worth remembering, too, that the U.S. GDP is itself bigger than Europe’s. Americans therefore not only spend proportionately more on universities. In absolute terms, the gap becomes greater. A higher percentage of Americans have graduated from university than in any European nation. America’s adults are, in this sense, better educated than Europe’s (figure 93). Despite this, the amount of continuing education that Americans undertake is above that of the Germans, Swiss, and Belgians, among the narrower range of countries surveyed in this case. Th e United States is in the middle of the European pack for state spending on primary and secondary schools, and for overall state educational spending (figure 94). But total educational spending, public and private, measured as a percentage of GDP, remains higher in the United States than anywhere in Europe (figure 95). Primary and secondary school teachers are reasonably well paid by European standards, in the upper middle of the spectrum (figure 96). And proportionately more Americans have graduated from secondary school than in any European country.
Civil Society
Authors: Baldwin Peter
Published: November 2020

Quantifying The Attributes of civil society, in turn, is complicated and slippery, but let us try. Americans are oft en thought to be unusually antigovernment in their political ideology, practically anarchists by European standards. They are supposed to believe in individual reliance, be less inclined than Europeans to have the state help the worst-off , and more likely to regard the poor as having failed. Surveys of attitudes do not, however, uniformly bear out such polarities. Proportionately more Americans than anyone but the Spaniards claim to obey the law without exception. A higher percentage of Americans trusts their government a great deal than many Europeans, other than the Spaniards, the Swiss and the Finns (figure 159). A Pew Foundation survey in 2007 found that proportionately fewer Americans worried that the government had too much control than did Germans and Italians, with the French at the same level and the British just a percentage point lower. A higher percentage of Americans have a great deal of confidence in their civil service than any Europeans other than the Irish. Proportionately, almost five times as many Americans as Swedes say they trust their government bureaucracy (figure 160). But talk is cheap, and such findings may indicate desire as much as reality. The trust of Americans in their state apparatus can be measured more concretely by their willingness to pay taxes. Unlike many Europeans, Americans pay the taxes required of them. Only in Austria and Switzerland are the underground economies as small. In the Mediterranean, the rate of tax avoidance is much higher—over three times the American level in Greece and Italy (figure 161). The Montana survivalist—so beloved by the European media—holed up in his shack, provisioned for a siege, and determined to resist the government’s impositions, is as uncharacteristic of the average American as the Basque or Corsican separatist, ready to kill and maim for his localist aspirations, is of the average European.
Element 43—Technetium
Authors: Scerri Eric
Published: November 2020

Element 43 (fig. 6.1) holds a special distinction among the seven elements of this book. It was one of just four elements that Mendeleev first predicted in his famous table and article of 1871. This fact is not so well known, as most accounts mention just the three famous predictions, namely empty spaces to which Mendeleev gave atomic weights of 44, 68, and 72. These three elements were all discovered within a period of fifteen years and named scandium, gallium, and germanium, respectively. But in the same early table, Mendeleev assigned an atomic weight to just one more empty space, which he placed below manganese. Mendeleev predicted that it would have an atomic weight of 100, although he changed it slightly to 99 in his book, The Principles of Chemistry . Given the success of Mendeleev’s first three predictions it is hardly surprising that strenuous efforts were made, in many parts of the world, to find the fourth element. Little did these early chemists know the problems they would encounter in trying to isolate this particularly rare and unstable element. In the early twentieth century, several claims were made for the discovery of the element. But these alleged elements, given various names such as davyum, illenium, lucium, and nipponium all turned out to be spurious. Then, in 1925, as mentioned in the last chapter, Otto Berg, Walter Noddack, and Ida Tacke (later Ida Noddack), claimed to have discovered not just one but two new members of group 7, which they named masurium and rhenium. Although their discovery of rhenium was accepted, their claim for the element directly below manganese has been bitterly disputed ever since. The official discovery of element 43 is accorded to Emilio Segrè and coworkers. Technetium, as they eventually called it, had to be synthesized rather than isolated from naturally occurring sources. It is also the only element to ever be “discovered” in Italy—in Palermo, Sicily, to be more precise. Segrè , who had been a visitor at the Berkeley cyclotron facility in California, was sent some molybdenum plates that had been irradiated for several months with a deuterium beam. Various chemical analyses by the Italian team revealed a new element, which could be extracted by boiling with sodium hydroxide that also contained a small amount of hydrogen peroxide.
Element 85—Astatine
Authors: Scerri Eric
Published: November 2020

The story surrounding element 85 is one of the most complex and interesting among our seven elements. The various claims for its discovery reveal many of the nationalistic traits that we have seen in the case of other elements, most notably the controversy surrounding the discovery of hafnium, element 72. But element 85 gives our study a greater depth than has yet been revealed by the already covered elements. What this story shows is that the nationalistic prejudices persist to this day in many respects and that the identity of the “discoverer” of the element very much depends on the nationality of the textbook that one might consult. It is also an element for which the majority of sources give an incorrect account in declaring Corson, MacKenzie, and Segrè as the true discoverers. The account I will detail owes much to the recent work of two young chemists, Brett Thornton and Shawn Burdette, whose 2010 article I have drawn heavily from. As in the case of many of the seven elements already surveyed, the view that Moseley’s experimental demonstration of the concept of atomic number resolved all issues in a categorical fashion is once again shown to be highly misleading. The position of element 85 in the periodic table shows it to lie among the halogens. Not surprisingly, therefore, the early researchers believed that they would find the element in similar locations to other halogens such as bromine and iodine, namely in the oceans or in sands washed up by oceans. Moreover, it was fully expected that the new element would behave like a typical halogen to form diatomic molecules and that it would have a low boiling point. The first major claim for the discovery of the element was made by Fred Allison, the same researcher who also erroneously claimed that he had discovered element 87. And just as in the case of element 87, Allison claimed to have found the new element using his own magneto-optical method, involving a time delay in the Faraday effect, which is to say the rotation of plane polarized light carried out by the application of a magnetic field to any particular solution of a
substance.
Element 61—Promethium
Authors: Scerri Eric
Published: November 2020

The last of our seven elements to be isolated was element 61, which is also the only rare earth among the seven. The problem with rare earths, which are 15 or even 17 in number depending on precisely how they are counted, is that they are extremely similar to each other and as a result are very difficult to separate. When the periodic table was first discovered in the 1860s only two or three rare earths even existed. As more of them turned up it became increasingly difficult to place them in the periodic system. Just like with all the other seven elements in our story, there were many false claims to its discovery. Moreover, the early claims must have seemed very plausible at the time because they appeared to draw support from X-ray evidence and Moseley’s law. Just like the priority dispute involving hafnium that took place in the early 1920s, the case of element 61 also involved an international controversy. This time one cannot entirely blame the aftermath of the Great War, as the two opponents consisted of Italians and Americans, with much of the scientific chicanery taking place, as was usual for the time, in the pages of London’s Nature magazine. But even though both sides of the priority dispute appealed to X-ray data and Moseley’s law, it turned out that neither side was right. In their own way, each side was working in complete delusion, since element 61 is highly radioactive and unstable, does not occur naturally on Earth, and could only be isolated in minute quantities by artificial means when such methods became sufficiently developed in the 1940s. Let us start at the beginning. In 1902, the Bohemian rare earth chemist Bohuslav Brauner was the first to suggest that an element lying precisely between neodymium and samarium remained to be discovered. He gave talks in his native Bohemia and published articles in some fairly obscure journals, all of which meant that few chemists in the wider arena became aware of his work.
Introduction to Bioproducts and Bioseparations
Authors: Harrison Roger G. , Todd Paul W. , Rudge Scott R. , Petrides Demetri P.
Published: November 2020

Bioproducts—chemical substances or combinations of chemical substances that are made by living things—range from methanol to whole cells. They are derived by extraction from whole plants and animals or by synthesis in bioreactors containing cells or enzymes. Bioproducts are sold for their chemical activity: methanol for solvent activity, ethanol for its neurological activity or as a fuel, penicillin for its antibacterial activity, taxol for its anticancer activity, streptokinase (an enzyme) for its blood clot dissolving activity, hexose isomerase for its sugar-converting activity, and whole Bacillus thuringiensis cells for their insecticide activity, to name a few very different examples. The wide variety represented by this tiny list makes it clear that bioseparations must encompass a correspondingly wide variety of methods. The choice of separation method depends on the nature of the product, remembering that purity, yield, and activity are the goals, and the most important of these is activity. This first chapter therefore reviews the chemical properties of bioproducts with themes and examples chosen to heighten awareness of those properties that must be recognized in the selection of downstream processes that result in acceptably high final purity while preserving activity. The final part of this chapter is an introduction to the field of bioseparations, which includes a discussion of the stages of downstream processing, the basic principles of engineering analysis as applied to bioseparations, and the various factors involved in developing a bioproduct for the marketplace. The pharmaceutical, agrichemical, and biotechnology bioproduct industries account for many billion dollars in annual sales—neglecting, of course, commodity foods and beverages. By “bioproduct” we mean chemical substances that are produced in or by a biological process, either in vivo or ex vivo (inside or outside a living organism). Figure 1.1 indicates a clear inverse relationship between bioproduct market size and cost. Owing to intense competition, cost, price, and value are very closely related, except in the case of completely new products that are thoroughly protected by patents, difficult to copy, and of added value to the end user.
The Beryllium Group
Authors: Schweitzer George K. , Pesterfield Lester L.
Published: November 2020

The elements which constitute the Be Group of the Periodic Table are known as the alkaline earths. They are beryllium Be, magnesium Mg, calcium Ca, strontium Sr, barium Ba, and radium Ra. All six of the elements have atoms characterized by an outer electron structure of ns2 with n representing the principal quantum number. The elements exhibit marked resemblances to each other with Be differing considerably. This deviation is assignable to the small size of Be which causes the positive charge of Be+2 to be concentrated, that is, the charge density is high. The higher charge-density ions attack HOH to attach OH− and to liberate H+, that is, they hydrolyze readily. All of the elements exhibit oxidation numbers of 0 and II, with their chemistries being dominated by the oxidation state II. The six metals are exceptionally reactive, being strong reductants, reacting with acids, HOH, and bases at all pH values to give H2. The other product of such reactions are M+2 ions and M(OH)2, the ions being present at lower pH values and the hydroxides being present at higher pH values. The transition from M+2 to M(OH)2 occurs at increasing pH values from Be to Ra, such that the hydroxide of Sr is slightly soluble and those of Ba and Ra are soluble. These soluble hydroxides are strong bases. Ionic sizes in pm for the members of the group are as follows: Be (59), Mg (72), Ca (100), Sr (132), Ba (135), and Ra (148). The E° values for the M+2/M couples are as follows: Be (−1.97 v), Mg (−2.36 v), Ca (−2.87 v), Sr (−2.89 v), Ba (−2.91 v), and Ra (−2.91 v), indicating that they are very reactive metals. a. E–pH diagram. The E–pH diagram for 10−1.0 M Be is presented in Figure 6.1. In the figure legend are equations which describe the lines separating the species. It can be seen that Be is thermodynamically unstable with respect to H+, HOH, and OH−. However, Be is relatively inactive in the middle pH range due to a protective oxide coat. To dissolve Be, dilute acids such as HCl or H2SO4, or bases such as NaOH or KOH are required.
The Nitrogen Group
Authors: Schweitzer George K. , Pesterfield Lester L.
Published: November 2020

The Nitrogen Group of the Periodic Table contains the elements nitrogen N, phosphorus P, arsenic As, antimony Sb, and bismuth Bi. The outer electron structure ns2np3 characterizes all five of the elements, with n representing principal quantum numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, respectively. The ns2np3 indicates the possibility of oxidation states V, III, and -III. As one goes down the group, the metallic character increases, with N and P being distinctly non-metals, As a metalloid, and Sb and Bi metals. However, the major bonding in most of the compounds of the group is covalent, aqueous cationic species being formed only by Sb and Bi. A covalency of 5 is exhibited by all the elements except N, this being assignable to the considerable energy required to place 10 electrons around the atom. The pentavalent state is the most stable for P, with its stability falling off down the group, as the trivalent state stability increases. Covalent radii in pm are as follows: N (75), P (110), As(122), and Sb(143). Ionic radii (most hypothetical) in pm are these: Sb+3 (90), Sb+5 (74), Bi+3 (117), and Bi+5 (90). a. E–pH diagram. Figure 9.1 depicts the E–pH diagram for N with the soluble species (except H+) at 10−1.0 M. Equations for the lines that separate the species are displayed in the legend. The colorless strong acid nitric acid HNO3, its colorless anion nitrate NO3−, the colorless weak acid nitrous acid HNO2, its colorless anion NO2−, the colorless ammonium ion NH4+, and the colorless hypothetical compound ammonium hydroxide NH4OH are involved.
The Scandium Group
Authors: Schweitzer George K. , Pesterfield Lester L.
Published: November 2020

The members of the Sc Group are Sc scandium, Y yttrium, La lanthanum, Ce cerium, Pr praseodymium, Nd neodymium, Pm promethium, Sm samarium, Eu europium, Gd gadolinium, Tb terbium, Dy dysprosium, Ho holmium, Er erbium, Tm thulium, Yb ytterbium, Lu lutetium, and Ac actinium. All these elements resemble each other greatly, especially in the series La–Lu (called the lanthanoids). Their slight differences may be assigned largely to size similarities, but a few oxidation state changes give rise to marked differences. The predominant oxidation state is III, but the IV state for Ce, and the II state for Eu are also important in their aqueous chemistries. The electron structures of these elements along with some other of their pertinent properties are shown in Table 12.1. Note the progression in the sizes of M+3 rising from Sc to Ac, but decreasing from La to Lu. This behavior causes Y+3 to fall in between Dy+3 and Ho+3, which results in yttrium’s chemistry usually resembling the latter lanthanoids. For this reason, Y will be treated as a lanthanoid in succeeding sections. The successive filling of the 4f electron level from La through Lu should also be noted, as well as the interesting 5d occupancy for Gd. The richest ore of Sc is the rare mineral thorveitite Sc2Si2O7, but it also occurs in very small quantities in some lanthanoid, uranium, and tungsten ores. Yttrium and the lanthanoids (abbreviated Ln), except for Pm, occur in monazite LnPO4 (mostly light lanthanoids), bastnaesite LnCO3F (mostly light lanthanoids), xenotime LnPO4 (mostly heavy lanthanoids), loparite (mostly light lanthanoids), and lateritic clays (some with mostly light lanthanoids, others with mostly heavy lanthanoids). All isotopes of Pm are radioactive and it does not occur with the lanthanoids. Exceedingly small amounts are present in uranium ores where it has been produced by the spontaneous fission of U-238. Its major source is artificial production, the longest lived isotope being Pm-145 (half life of 17.7 years). Ac is also without a stable isotope, the radioactive element resulting from the decay of naturally occurring Th and U. The longest lived Ac species is Ac-227 which has a half life of 21.77 years.
The Fe–Co–Ni Group
Authors: Schweitzer George K. , Pesterfield Lester L.
Published: November 2020

The three elements to be treated in this chapter (Fe, Co, Ni) are the sixth, seventh, and eighth members of the first transition series. The first five members (Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn) have been treated in previous chapters (Chapters 12, 13, and 14). The ten elements of this first transition series (Sc through Zn) are characterized by electron activity in the 4s–3d levels. All elements in the 3d transition series are metals, and many of their compounds tend to be colored as a result of unpaired electrons. Most of the elements have a strong tendency to form complex ions due to participation of the d electrons in bonding. Unlike the previous three elements (V, Cr, Mn), these three do not show a variety of oxidation states. The higher oxidation states are almost absent in compounds, Fe showing principally the II and III, Co the II and III, and Ni only the II. The III states are less stable than the II states unless they are stabilized by complex formation. The resemblance of these three elements is notable, they being more like each other than they are to the elements below them. a. E–pH diagram. The E–pH diagram in Figure 15.1 shows Fe in oxidation states of 0, II, and III. This diagram, which involves iron at 10−1.0 M is oversimplified in several ways. The Fe(II) and Fe(III) cations are more properly designated as Fe(HOH)6+2 and Fe(HOH)6+3, reflecting the coordination number of 6. The region just to the left of the Fe+2/Fe(OH)2 line involves Fe(OH)+, and the region just to the left of the Fe+3/FeO(OH) line involves numerous hydroxo complexes such as Fe(HOH)5OH+2 and Fe(HOH)4(OH)2+. At very high pH values, there is a tendency for Fe(OH)2 to be converted to HFeO2−, and at very high E values, the powerful oxidant, red-purple FeO4−2 can be produced. When these latter five species are introduced, Figure 15.2 results. This, too, is probably simplified since it is known that other species are present, such as Fe2(OH)4+4 and Fe3(OH)4+5. The species FeO4−2 can only be prepared in a very strong base.
The Actinoid Metals
Authors: Schweitzer George K. , Pesterfield Lester L.
Published: November 2020

The elements making up the Actinoid Metals are those with atomic numbers from 89 through 103: Ac, Th, Pa, U, Np, Pu, Am, Cm, Bk, Cf, Es, Fm, Md, No, and Lr. The name is meant to parallel the lanthanoids. They are generally abbreviated as An. Their valence electron structures are 7s26d0−25f0−14. These elements resemble the lanthanoids somewhat, but they have a much wider variation in oxidation states. Nor do they resemble each other to the extent that the lanthanoids do, this being a result of the oxidation state variations. Ac resembles La greatly, but Th, Pa, and U resemble their vertical congeners (Hf, Ta, W) more than they resemble Ce, Pr, and Nd. From Np onwards, the resemblance to the lanthanoids increases such that by Am, the actinoid elements are behaving very similarly, showing a predominant oxidation state of III. All of this occurs because the 7s, 6d, and 5f levels are much closer in energy than the 6s, 5d, and 4f levels. Table 18.1 lists the actinoids with several of their pertinent characteristics. No stable isotopes of any of these elements exist, the last element in the Periodic Table with a stable isotope being Bi (Bi-209). However, some of the An elements have isotopes with very long half lives, which means that they are found in nature in relative abundance, most notably as Th-232 (1010.1 years), U-235 (108.8 years), and U-238 (109.7 years). Others are products of the decay of the above isotopes, so even though they are shorter lived, they persist in nature since they are continually being produced. The most important nuclides of this type are Ac-227 (21.8 years) and Pa-231 (104.5 years), both coming from U-235 decay. In U ores, very small amounts of Np-237 (106.3 years), Np-239 (2.4 days), and Pu-239(104.3 years) arise from the interaction of neutrons with U isotopes. Isotopes of the elements beyond U are produced artificially, Np and Pu by neutron capture by U, Am and Cm by multiple neutron capture by Pu, and elements beyond Cm by further neutron captures or bombardment of lower atomic number actinoids with ions of He, B, C, N, or O.
Late-Night Thoughts about Democracy in the Long Emergency
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

Democracy, winston churchill once famously said, is the worst form of government except for all of the others ever tried. The Greeks, from whom we inherited the idea of self-government, after all, couldn’t manage it for long and fell victim to the political vices of greed, hubris, imperial overreach, and ruinous wars. In modern times it is possible, historian Walter Prescott Webb once wrote, that the upsurge of democracy in the early modern era was largely the result of the abundance of resources resulting from the discovery of the New World rather than from any general human improvement. His point was that the larger per capita ratios of land, minerals, and natural resources after 1492 reduced the pressures on governments and populations under conditions of scarcity and otherwise diverted peoples’ energies to the tasks of getting rich and getting on in the New World, the effect of which was to make us a more agreeable and more manageable lot. The ratios of resources to people, however, are now about what they were prior to the “discovery” of the New World, and the due bill for the long binge of fossil fuel–powered modernization is said to be in the mail. In a more crowded and hotter world, perhaps democracy will be “just a moment in history,” as Robert Kaplan (1997) once put it, a casualty of the failure to manage growing complexity and scarcity. Many other forces also work against democracy. Vice President Al Gore, for one, argues that decades of television and nonstop exposure to advertising have eroded our capacity for the reasoned judgment necessary for democracy and that this is a large factor in the tide of irrationality that has recently flooded our politics. Susan Jacoby, similarly, believes that we live in a “new age of unreason,” that America is “ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism,” and that Americans are “living through an overarching crisis of memory and knowledge involving everything about the way we learn and think” (2008, pp. xx, 309).
Leadership in the Long Emergency
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

In june of 1858 abraham lincoln began his address at Springfield, Illinois by saying, “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.” He spoke on the issue of slavery that day with a degree of honesty that other politicians were loath to practice. At Springfield he asserted that “A house divided against itself cannot stand . . . this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” His immediate targets were the evasions and complications of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the Supreme Court ruling handed down in the Dred Scott case, but particularly those whom he accused of conspiring to spread slavery to states where it did not already exist. In his speech Lincoln accused Senator Stephen Douglas, President Franklin Pierce, Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney, and President James Buchanan of a conspiracy to spread slavery. This accusation was supported by circumstantial evidence such that it was “impossible to not believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first lick was struck.” His opponent in the upcoming Senatorial election, Stephen Douglas, he described as a “caged and toothless” lion. Lincoln had begun the process of “framing” the issue of slavery without equivocation, but in a way that would still build electoral support based on logic, evidence, and eloquence. On February 27, 1860, Lincoln’s address at the Cooper Institute in New York extended and deepened the argument. He began with words from Stephen Douglas: “Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.” He proceeded to analyze the historical record to infer what the “fathers” actually believed. Lincoln in a masterful and lawyerly way identified 39 of the founders who had “acted on the question” of slavery in decisions voted on in 1784, 1787, 1789, 1798, 1803, and 1820.
Interlude: Helium, Argon, and Creationism
Authors: Fisher David
Published: November 2020

Henry M. Morris, widely regarded as the founder of the modern creationist movement, died February 25, 2006, at the age of eighty-seven. His 1961 book The Genesis Flood, subtitled, The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications, was a cornerstone of the movement. Many more books followed, including Scientific Creationism; What Is Creation Science?; Men of Science; Men of God; History of Modern Creationism; The Long War Against God; and Biblical Creationism. In 1970 he founded the Institute for Creation Research, which continues to be a leading creationist force, now headed by his sons, John and Henry III. In 1982 I debated the subject with him at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale in front of a sellout crowd of several thousand. He had emphasized in our initial contacts that the debate would be based on science, not religion, but when he opened his remarks with this same statement and the audience responded with loud cries of “Amen!” and “Praise Jesus!” I knew I was in for a long night. Both of us steered away from the biological arguments, I because I’m not a biologist and he presumably because the Biblical side of that is so evidently silly—if he had tried to describe how Noah brought two mosquitoes or two fleas aboard he might have got away with it, but the whole panoply of billions of species of submicroscopic creatures was obviously a problem. Instead he concentrated on the physical side, in particular on the age of the earth, and that was fine with me. As noted in the previous chapters, the earth’s age is central to Darwin’s argument. A strict interpretation of the Bible gives a limit of thousands of years, which is clearly not enough time for evolution to take place. Radioactive dating, on the other hand, gives Darwin his needed time span of billions of years, and so a cornerstone of the creationist argument is its necessary destruction. Morris was a wonderful motivational speaker, and spent a long introduction wandering through the Bible to show how wonderfully reasonable it is.