Not equal! Not even the same substance. Real coal is a mineral that forms underground over millions of years. Charcoal is the chunks of carbon that are left over when you burn something organic. We can analyze these remains to find information about the original substance, but you won't see something like a poisonous tree making poisonous charcoal - what comes out of the fire isn't the original wood anymore.

Even coal-coal isn't all the same. The hardness and percentage of impurities means it burns differently, so certain grades of coal are better for power plants vs industrial use. Go to any coal mining town in Pennsylvania if you're prepared to learn a lot about the superior qualities of anthracite coal.

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I see how vague my question is now lol. Primarily, I was asking why any part of the body made up of proteins would be alkaline, but now I know that it is not as simple as "amino acid = acidic pH".

This is generally because someone got a grant to study x. Part of the grant parameters may be to recruit people from outside large metro areas or it could be that the research grant team is located locally or is contracting with a local entity to do part of the research work.

Yup this is 100% the type of thing I was looking for, thanks!

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So, from my understanding of what you wrote, amino acids have both basic and acidic properties due to the presence of a basic amine and an acidic COOH as functional groups (other than the variable R group)... Although it is ultimately the buffers in our blood that are largely responsible for maintaining a pH of ~7.4.

Thanks for the detailed explanation!!

It's important to know that radiation isn't one thing.

The three main types that people mean when they use that term are alpha, beta, and gamma.

Alpha particles are little helium nuclei. They can mess up DNA (maybe causing cancer), but they don't travel far and are usually only harmful if the source is inside you.

Beta particles are electrons moving at incredible speed. Not as likely to cause damage as alpha particles, but they travel much further and can cause damage if you are near the emitting material.

Gamma radiation is just very energetic photons (light). Gamma rays are the least likely to do damage because they will likely pass straight through you without interacting. They travel incredible distances though and are difficult to shield against.

X-rays are the same kind of thing as gamma rays, but they have less energy. They are more likely to interact with your body and are more easily blocked. They can do some damage, but the probability is relatively low. Prolonged exposure is bad, but they are low risk for occasional medical imaging.

It is important to note that all of these are harmful because they are ionizing radiation. They can damage complex molecules needed by the body (mostly DNA but also cell structure if in sufficient quantity).

Water is a very stable molecule and x-rays aren't powerful enough to change it. You can actually sterilize water by irradiating it with UV light or stronger (UV is like x-rays but even lower energy), because the molecules that make up bacteria and viruses are more fragile than water molecules.

I'd chuck it in the MinION sequencer in the lab and start getting some data on methylation, as well as telomere length. Problem is the association between age and methylation pattern and telomere length is somewhat weak in individuals, so you wouldn't be able to get more than a hint at their age.

The name amino acid refers to the amine group (NH2-R) and the carboxylic acid group (COOH-R) that make up the backbone of amino acids. The amine group can be a proton acceptor while the carboxylic group can be a proton donator so most amino acids are neutral. Some amino acids have acidic R groups (gutamate/asparatate) which makes them acidic, while others have basic R groups (lysine, histidine, arginine) which makes them basic.

In reality, since proteins are made up of 100's or 1000's of amino acids, they act as buffers, accepting and donating protons as needed in the blood. However, protein isn't the main buffer used to maintain the blood pH. Our bodies need blood to be kept at ~7.4 pH in order to function and if that changes too much we can get really sick. Our blood uses carbonic acid/bicarbonate as its main buffer which provides stability to the blood pH.

Epstein-Barr virus has been associated with mononucleosis, Hodgkin and Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Burkitt’s lymphoma, nasal carcinoma, Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, acute cerebella’s ataxia, dermatomyositis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and Sjögren’s syndrome and multiple sclerosis. Would be nice to get a vaccine for it.

Amino acids have a carboxylic acid and an amino group, so it's both an acid and a base. In any case, once you dissolve it in water you can just add other acids or bases to change the pH.

Our DNA and RNA are also acidic, the A literally stands for acid. But again it's just buffered by other stuff.

The "acid" in amino acids refers to the carboxylic acid on the C-terminal side of the backbone, but doesn't actually mean the amino acid has acidic properties, it's just a naming convention. Most amino acids balance out around 7 because in water, the carboxylic acid will give up a proton while the N-terminus snags a proton. The net change in pH is thus largely negligible.

The Comet failures were driven far more by the fact that the windows had sharp corners, which concentrate stress, than by the absolute size of the windows.

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It's more fundamental than that. A crystal with a defect has higher entropy than a crystal without any defects. For defects up to a particular number N (variable based on the crystal material and temperature and crystal size and so on), the Gibbs free energy released by defect formation (usually for simplicity's sake taken to be a vacancy) is larger than the energy consumed to generate the vacancy and the defects form spontaneously.

Only at absolute zero can a crystal be perfect.

The pH of what? We have a wide range of pHs in our body. Do you mean our skin? Our skin is actually acidic, if just mildly so. Same with hair. Blood is slightly alkaline. Stomach is obviously acidic (stomach acid). Saliva and urine changes depending on diet. Gotta be more specific if you want a good scientific answer :)

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Yes, that's literaly the cause of metal fatigue, if you bent a spoon back and forth enough times, it'll look ok but the slighest heating of shift and it breaks because you're breaking what's left of the oringinal form. This is the trick behind Yuri Geller rubbing spoons til they fall apart.

It's also why the british plane Comet crashed, the big windows let the metal flex enough just past the elastic limit to "fatigue" the metal and make little cracks in the structure. Over time they built up and you get planes falling from the sky.

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The answer your looking for is most likely GTP. Opioid receptors are g coupled protein receptors (GCPR) which. Understanding this mechanism requires a basic understanding of biochemistry and the central dogma of molecular biology. But you can think of GTP as a molecule that does work. So the opioid binds, causes a change on the other end of the protein receptor, which leads to downstream effects and ends when GDP is replaced by GTP, causing a conformational change in the GPCR, releasing the opioid.

Sort of. Over the long term, they can do retrospective research (not very good data but still data) and prospective studies. Retrospectively they can survey or see the data of every person who smokes, vapes, and does both. They can do the same prospectively. Then they can see what cancers are more prevalent in group 1 2 or 3. For example, smokers got cancer A 5x more, vapers got cancer B 3x more, and both smokers got cancer C 2x more you can conclude that cig cause more cancer A, vapes cause more cancer B, and so forth. It’s just time and data. Don’t forget causation isn’t always a direct correlation. The best example is ashtrays. People with ashtrays in their homes have much higher lung cancer rates - is it the ashtrays causing cancer? No it’s the smoking. So sometimes you have to step back and ask if there is truly a direct causation between what you are studying and the outcome