Penicillin

Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming's  desk was often littered with small glass dishes filled with bacteria cultures scraped from boils, abscesses, and infections. Fleming allowed the cultures to sit around for weeks, hoping something interesting would turn up.

One day, he decided to clean the bacteria-filled dishes and dumped them into a tub of disinfectant. He soon noticed a dish in the tub, which was still above the surface of the water and cleaning agent. As he did, Fleming suddenly saw a dab of fungus on one side of the dish, which had killed the bacteria. The fungus turned out to be a rare strain of penicillium that had drifted onto the dish from an open window.

Fleming began testing the fungus and found that it killed deadly bacteria, yet was harmless to human tissue. However, he was unable to produce it in any significant quantity and didn’t believe it would be effective in treating disease, but he wrote up the findings in a paper he presented to the scientific community. A decade later, another team of scientists followed up on his lead. Using more sophisticated techniques, they were able to successfully produce one of the most life-saving drugs in modern medicine.

Wayback Machine

If you are interested in what a particular web site used to look like, you can use the Wayback Machine website to help. It shows a calendar and  you pick the date you wish to see what the site looked like. I mentioned this last year, but thought it was worth mentioning again.

Some get around it and the pages are no longer available. For instance, I was looking up some info from the Obama campaign where he answered questions that were sent in. The pages have all been replaced with a page that sends you to the whitehouse.gov site. LINK  Seems the answers from back then might not be the same today and we might be confused. However, I did manage to find a way to the original site by another means.

Sortie and Sally

The papers have been mentioning that the military has been making many sorties over Libya. A sortie is an offensive military mission. The term was used originally to mean an attack from a fortress, but now most commonly used to describe a single mission by a single military aircraft. it can also be called a sally, which is an action to burst forth (sally forth). Sortie was first used in the 1700s and comes from the French, sortir, to go out.

More on Sally and Sally forth - Sally ports" were a feature of castles and fortresses, a closely-guarded opening in the wall of a castle designed to mount quick attacks on whatever enemy army might be besieging the castle.  A "sally," from the Latin "salire" meaning "to jump," was originally a sudden rush out of a besieged position, a lightning attack designed to surprise the enemy. The troops would sortie from the Sally Port. A good soldier does not sally slowly.

Sally Forth Comics

There were two comic strips named Sally Forth. Sally Forth was a syndicated comic strip from the sixties and seventies about a voluptuous female soldier, targeted at overseas US servicemen. A second, unrelated strip, started in the eighties (and still being produced) was about a sarcastic, American, middle-class mother at home and work. Her name was a takeoff to describe her adventures.

Dirty Dishes

A change in dishwasher detergents that became final in 2010 may cause some changes in your kitchen. The new formulas lack phosphates, chemicals that are bad for the environment, but good for cleaning. Check the package and try something new for a change. Your old cleaner may not have been reformulated to replace the cleaning power of the old ingredients. Does your old cleaner seem as effective as it used to? Do you seem to use more to get those dirty dishes clean?

Consumer Reports, in September 2010, generally scored tablets and packets higher than cheaper powders and gels, but it said new products are still evolving. Rinse aids help, and are often combined with detergents in the newer products. If you spot spots, it's time to change.

Voice Mail

Do you remember answering machines? They were a precursor to voice mail systems of today. In 1986, Scott Jones and Greg Carr started Boston Technologies, and began working on a system where you could dial a number and find out stock information. One good idea led to another and the pair thought they could provide people with built in voice mail.

Until 1988, all phone companies besides AT&T were legally banned from providing voice mail. When the ruling was reversed, the pair approached several telecom companies and got financial backing. Within 3 months, their ideas were realized. Voice mail is slowing in popularity with some age groups due to text messaging, but is still a staple of the telecommunications industry. I don't think voice mail will be replaced for a while.

Iodine and Nuclear Fallout

There has been a run on iodine pills in Hawaii, Finland, and some European countries where people are expecting trips to Japan or are worried about Nuclear fallout.

Iodine may be used in radioiodine-contamination emergencies, such as nuclear accidents, to "block" the thyroid's uptake of radioiodine.

Potassium iodide was approved in 1982 by the US FDA to protect the thyroid glands from radioactive iodine from accidents or fission emergencies. In the event of an accident or attack at a nuclear power plant, or fallout from a nuclear bomb, volatile fission product radionuclides may be released, of which 131I is one of the most common by-products and a particularly dangerous one due to thyroid gland concentration of it and this may lead to thyroid cancer. By saturating the body with a source of stable iodide prior to exposure, inhaled or ingested 131I tends to be excreted.

Potassium iodide’s value as a radiation protective (thyroid blocking) agent was demonstrated at the time of the Chernobyl nuclear accident when Soviet authorities distributed it in a 30 km zone around the plant. The purpose was to protect residents from radioactive iodine, a highly carcinogenic material found in nuclear reactors which had been released by the damaged reactor.

Potassium iodide cannot protect against any other causes of radiation poisoning, nor can it provide any degree of protection against dirty bombs that produce radionuclides other than isotopes of iodine. Also, using common table salt is not an effective substitute. Even with that, salt supplies have been almost completely depleted in stores around Japan.

Corn Flakes

The Kellogg brothers, John and Will , in Battle Creek, MI, were trying to boil a pot of grain and they accidentally left the pot on the stove for several days. The mixture turned moldy, but the product that emerged was dry and thick and turned flaky, rather than the desired doughy. Being frugal, they toasted the flakes and served them. Through experimentation they eliminated the mold part and created corn flakes. They continued to experiment with other grains Incidentally, they thought that this type of bland food was good to reduce the sex drive.

They were also the first to add a goodies in the cereal box to boost sales, a Funny Jungleland Moving Picture Booklet was first in the early 1900s. Battle Creek is still home to Kellogg and hosts a major Balloon Festival every year. I'll bet you didn't know the name of the corn flake mascot, since 1959, is Cornelius (Corny) Rooster.

Exabytes

From bites to bytes - Last year, manufacturers shipped 5.1 exabytes of storage devices. An exabyte is a quintillion bytes, or a thousand trillion. Below are some more interesting tidbits about exabytes and the internet.

* In 2004, global monthly Internet traffic passed 1 exabyte for the first time and six years later, it is estimated at 21 exabytes per month, or 252 exabytes per year.

* Mobile data traffic is growing faster than non-mobile traffic, has tripled each year for the past three years, and is projected to rise another 26-fold to about 75 exabytes per year by 2015. (The top 1 percent of mobile data subscribers generate over 20 percent of mobile data traffic,)  

* Non-mobile internet traffic has averaged 151% growth each year since 1997.

* By 2013, annual global internet traffic will reach two-thirds of a zettabyte or 667 exabytes.

* Global mobile data traffic will reach over two exabytes per month by 2013.

*  It is estimated that there was 988 exabytes of data created last year, 2010. That is over 18 million times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written.