Wakefield et al Lancet Summary

A study conducted in 1998 by Wakefield and Lancet found an association between gastrointestinal disease and developmental regression in a group of children reported as previously normal. This may be associated with possible environmental triggers, including the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination, as reported by the parents of the children. The test group was a group of 12 children, 11 of them boys, between the ages of 3 and 10 with an average of 6 years old. They all had a history of normal development and were then referred to a paediatric gastroenterology unit with a loss of acquired skills, including language, and diarrhea and abdominal pain. For 8 of the children, their parents or physician had identified a notable link between this vaccination and the onset of their behavioral problems. In some cases the children completely lost their language and communication skills and 10 of the children were diagnosed with autism, in some form. 5 of the children showed an early, adverse reaction to the vaccination, including convulsions, rash, delirium, and fever.  In this study the children were thoroughly assessed, ruling out a wide variety of neurological and gastrointestinal abnormalities. The intestinal abnormalities that were identified, ranging from lymphoid nodular hyperplasia to aphthoid ulceration, were fairly consistent across the test group. Wakefield and Lancet state that they prove no connection between the mumps, measles, and rubella vaccination and these problems, just that they found chronic intestinal issues (chronic enterocolitis) to be linked to neuropsychiatric dysfunction and, in most cases, this was onset after the vaccination.

D.S. Chapter 4 Summary

A terribly fascinating topic for science is, born out of simple curiosity, where do the elements come from? The theory that emerged from this question essentially leaves us with the idea, as put by Carl Sagan that "We are all star stuff." Scientists think that all known elements in the universe come from stars, or suns. Beginning as just fiery masses of hydrogen and helium the stars fuse these elements together again and again, sometimes all the way up to iron. But that is the heaviest element that star can fuse with the energy they have during their normal life cycle. So where do the rest of the elements come from? The stars, reaching the end of their life cycle, are no longer producing enough energy at their cores in the form of nuclear fusion to balance the threat of implosion. As a result the stars collapse in on themselves with enough force to fuse even protons and electrons into neutrons at their core. They then explode outward with unimaginable force and every known element is created from this "particle blizzard." Because everything else after this, including our planets, is made of elements, everything is aggregated from this cloud. In our own solar system we ended up with the gas giants, that are home to conditions that make elements behave in almost incomprehensible ways, compared to their behavior on earth. And, closer to our sun, our Earth.
In the 1950's Clair Patterson did EXTENSIVE research about the age of our earth. He did this through measuring the ratios of different isotopes in iron. The presence of such specific elements of the same age in our solar system also helped scientists come to the realization that our solar system is bobbing up and down in space-time, as proven by not only the regular extinctions that occured on earth but the presence of consistent layers of iridium throughout the entire planet, discovered by a father-son team with the last name Alvarez.

Disappearing Spoon Chp. 3 Summary

Many different, passionate scientists throughout history have shaped the way we know science today. Robert Bunson, best known for significantly improving the burner that everyone that has ever fiddled around with in a school science class, also left a lasting impact on the discovery of elements with his invention of a spectroscope. Bunson and a student took an old cigar box and attached two broken-off eyepieces from telescopes. Their results were incredible - they discovered that every element has a unique signature of colored bands and this knowledge later helped scientists immeasurably by allowing them to determine the presence of specific elements without having to boil them down or disintegrate them with acid. Another significant figure is Dmitri Mendeleev, who is generally credited with the development of the periodic table of elements. He grouped elements together by their properties and eventually was able to not only include all 62 elements known at the time but also to predict where elements that had yet to be discovered would fit and what their general properties would be. He surprised many people in his accuracy of this, including Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who was eventually (after much debate and bickering with Mendeleev) credited with discovering gallium. Among the elements that Mendeleev had predicted but not yet known, were the lanthanides, which are prevalent in Ytterby, a coastal village in Sweden. After interest in a local quarry grew because of the desire to make porcelain, Johan Gadolin made significant progress with isolating several lathanides, characterized by their ability to produce bright pigments when glazes were processed.

Disappearing Spoon Chapter 2 Summary

The chapter opens with discussing that, originally, molecules were named based on an old Germanic system that named every exact protein structure, but in the 1960's as "a number of quick amino acid sequencing tools become available" scientists realized this was not terribly viable, as one protein in particular, if spelled out this way, would be 189,819 letters long. Then, moving to genealogy, Kean discusses both the similarities and great differences of elements in the same columns, specifically carbon, silicon, and germanium. Carbon is so miraculous because of the way it forms bonds and it would seem, especially to science fiction fans, that silicon, which shares many characteristics would be a prime candidate for an alternative form of life. Yet the fact that silicon only becomes gaseous at an extremely high temperature makes that idea significantly less feasible. Of these three elements, though, germanium is the "black sheep." Despite the fact that it was the first element to be used to make a solid transistor that eliminated the need to old vacuum tubes, silicon came in and stole all of its glory because it is much more abundant and therefore cheaper and doesn't stall at high temperatures.

Disappearing Spoon: Chapter 1 Summary

Before examining the individual elements in the periodic table, first just look at the structure of it - it alone holds a great amount of information. Kean begins by asserting that before teachers introduce students to the jumble of abbreviations and numbers and decimals, they should show them a blank table, without any markings at all. Looking like a castle made of a great number of bricks all composed of completely different substances the place, or geography, of each block holds almost everything scientifically interesting about it. Beginning on the far right are the noble gases, which would have been Plato's favorite elements, had he known about them, with their "perfect" "aloofness," not requiring any more or wanting to give away any electrons to be content. All the way across the table, with alkalis and halogens and earth metals and all the others all have their own set of characteristics and particular affiliations for bonding with each other based on the number of electrons they contain. And one person who shed light on the behavior of electrons more than anyone else was Gilbert Lewis. He laid out a theory about acids and bases and how they react. And many acids, like antimony and carborane have their own rich histories as well. Perhaps most interesting about the elements is the way their electrons behave, with different shapes of shells and the transition metals with unpredictable hidden electrons. Lastly, it's hard to ignore what makes up the majority of the mass of atoms - their nuclei. Maria Goeppert discovered magic nuclei which are special organizations of protons and neutrons that appear at numbers specific numbers in the table. The reading the periodic table vertically, by columns, reveals much about its past.