Toxaphene is a chemical substance that is very toxic. It is a persistent organic pollutant, and one of the twelve substances listed in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Its use is banned since 1993. It was used as an insecticide. It was mainly the cotton and soybean growers who used it. It was also used to treat Mange in cattle. The substance damages the lungs, the nervous system and the kidneys. It is a carcinogen and causes mutations and birth defects. Because it is very volatile, it travels easily through the environment.
Eduard Strauss
Eduard Strauss (b. Vienna, 15 March 1835, d. Vienna, 28 December 1916) was a Viennese composer of light music. He was also a conductor. He was the brother of the more famous composers Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss, the son of Johann Strauss I, and the father of Johann Strauss III.
Jug (container)
A jug is a type of container that holds liquid (e.g. water). It has an opening that is often small. This is where the liquid is poured from. Jugs nearly always have a handle.
Paul Goldschmidt
Paul Edward Goldschmidt (born September 10, 1987 in Wilmington, Delaware) is an American baseball player. He currently plays as a first baseman for the Arizona Diamondbacks of Major League Baseball (MLB). He debuted for the Diamondbacks on August 1, 2011 in a game against the San Francisco Giants.
Dendritic cell
Dendritic cells (DCs) are white blood cells forming part of the mammalian immune system. They process antigen material from pathogens and put it on their surface. There it touches other cells of the immune system. So, dendritic cells are antigen-presenting cells. They act as messengers between the innate and adaptive immune systems.
Dendritic cells are present in tissues in contact with the external environment. These tissues are the skin, and the inner lining of the nose, lungs, stomach and intestines. They can also be found in an immature state in the blood.
Dedritic cells develop from monocytes, white blood cells which circulate in the body. Depending on the signal, monocytes turn into either dendritic cells or macrophages. The monocytes are formed from stem cells in the bone marrow.
Immature dendritic cells constantly sample their surrounds for pathogens such as viruses and bacteria. This is done through pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) such as the toll-like receptors (TLRs).
They eat pathogens and break down their proteins into small pieces and put these fragments on their cell surface using MHC molecules. Once activated, these cells move to the lymph nodes and become mature. They switch on cell-surface receptors which activate T cells and B cells to start and shape the adaptive immune response.
Dendritic cells were first described by Paul Langerhans (Langerhans cells) in the late nineteenth century. It wasn't until 1973, however, that Ralph Steinman and Zanvil Cohn gave them the name 'dendritic cells'. For discovering the central role of dendritic cells in the adaptive immune response, Steinman was awarded the Albert Lasker Award in 2007, and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2011.
Ralph Steinman
Ralph Marvin Steinman (January 14, 1943 – September 30, 2011) was a Canadian immunologist and cell biologist at Rockefeller University. He studied a kind of cell in the immune system and called them "dendritic cells". He made these discoveries while working in the laboratory of Zanvil A. Cohn. He was of Jewish descent.
On October 3, 2011, the Nobel Committee announced that Steinman had received one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for "his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity". The other half went to Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann, for "their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity". However, the committee did not know that Steinman had died three days earlier, on September 30, from pancreatic cancer. The committee considered what to do about Steinman's prize, since the rule is that the prize is not awarded posthumously.
The committee later decided that, as the decision to award the prize "was made in good faith", they would not change the award.
Steinman's daughter said that he had joked the previous week with his family about hanging on until the prize announcement. Steinman said: "I know I have got to hold out for that. They don't give it to you if you have passed away. I got to hold out for that".
Steinman had received numerous other awards and recognitions for his life-long work on dendritic cells, such as the Albert Lasker Award (2007), the Gairdner Foundation International Award (2003), and the Cancer Research Institute William B. Coley Award (1998). In addition, he was made a member of Institute of Medicine (U.S.A.; elected 2002) and the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A.; elected 2001).
Residual-current device
A ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI), or Residual Current Device (RCD) is a type of circuit breaker which shuts off electric power when it senses an imbalance between the outgoing and incoming current. The main purpose is to protect people from an electric shock caused when some of the current travels through a person's body due to an electrical fault such as a short circuit, insulation failure, or equipment malfunction. Standard circuit breakers shut off power when the current is too high, like 10, 15, or 20 amps, but a mere 0.030 amps through a body can cause paralysis of skeletal muscles and stop the human heart. The GFCI / RCD breaks the circuit when it detects an imbalance of only 0.005 amps (0.030 amps in Australia and some European and Asian countries).
A circuit breaker protects the house wires and receptacles from overheating and possible fire. A GFCI / RCD protects people and is often found in bathrooms or kitchens where electrical devices are used and people's bare flesh may be in contact with the floor or metal fixtures which provide an alternate path for current to travel in the case of an electrical fault.
A GFCI / RCD can also prevent fires from short circuits and other electrical faults that don't involve humans such as a low current short where the current never reaches the trigger point for a circuit breaker, e.g. a live wire falls in a tub of water or moist soil and only 1 or 2 amps of current flow.
Electrical sockets supply a flow of current which comes out of one pin of a socket, called "Live", runs through an electrical device, and returns through the other pin "Neutral." In many countries, such as USA, India and others, the "Neutral" is also connected to the earth (via a rod driven into the soil). If a person touches a bare "live" wire, current can travel through the body to any part (like another hand or the bare feet) connected directly or indirectly to the earth, such as through metal such as plumbing pipes or through moist tiles or a bathtub full of water where the water acts as a conductor. Pure water is a poor conductor but in the kitchen or bathroom it is usually salty or soapy which increases the conductivity; but no matter, since it takes so little current to kill a person, even a poor conductor can result in a lethal shock.
The GFCI device uses a differential transformer to compare the current "going out" on the hot leg with the current "coming back in" on the neutral. If there is a large enough difference between the two, typically 5 milliamps (30 in some places), then that is considered an imbalance, and an internal solenoid mechanically trips the built-in circuit breaker cutting off connection to both the Live and Neutral pins.
The assumption is that some of the outgoing current is going through a person or object and is taking an alternate route back to Neutral.
Death caused by electricity (Electrocution) can happen when as little as 20-30 milliamps of current flows through the heart for just a fraction of a second. The GFCI device protects at a level which is much lower than what is needed to cause harm.